


Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - a rewriting.

by witchbreed



Series: Star Wars Rewritings [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, M/M, Multi, Rose/Keydel, also mentions of: Jacen/Poe (past), luke/wedge, pava/rey, the sequel trilogy is a gay's only event, there is legit no first order pov in this one because their lil neonazi death club sucks lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25412155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchbreed/pseuds/witchbreed
Summary: what Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker could - or should - have been.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Series: Star Wars Rewritings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840546
Kudos: 3





	1. Mission Control.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not so much a rewriting of the actual movie TRoS (aka, no major plot points were used) as much as it is a sequel to my TLJ rewriting (https://archiveofourown.org/works/13352298). I did borrow some characters from the original TROS, but most new ones are from Legends or the shows.
> 
> As the first time, the cast remains the same, but for reference, I'd picture:  
> Raúl Castillo as Jacen Syndulla; Angela Bassett as Dhara Leonis/Wraith; Denzel Washington as Zare Leonis; Naomi Ackie as Jannah Calrissian, and Keisha Castle-Hughes as Zarii.

* * * * *

* * * * *

It has been two years since the Resistance dealt a heavy blow

against the forces of the First Order, sending a message across the Galaxy

that people must stand and fight back. Insurgency among their ranks has grown,

with more and more Stormtroopers defecting to the Resistance’s side – but not enough

to counter the will of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, who has remained reclusive since his defeat in Crait,

but whose forced expansion throughout the Outer Rim has nonetheless brought chaos and destruction along its path.

The hope of the Resistance rests in the shoulders of Rey Organa, the new Jedi,

but a disturbance in the Force may cause yet unforeseen problems to her mission…

* * * * *

**AJAN KLOSS**

The doors of the medlab opened with a loud _clank_ , and Kaydel Ko Connix stepped out, looking somber and distraught. She pulled off her insulating mask and gloves, which had started to feel suffocating.

Not the material against her skin as much as the mood around Ajan Kloss, their new base of operations. But it surely didn’t help.

“How is she?” Poe asked. He, Rose, General Holdo and C3PO had been waiting outside for any sign of life for the past few hours, each more worried than the next. There had been no news of any sort, and unlike what people say, no news generally meant not good news.

Thankfully, not in this case.

“No changes”, she said, with a heavy sigh. “They are running some tests against, but nothing new.”

“At least she’s not getting any worse”, Rose pointed out. “That’s good, right?”

“Stable is better than nothing”, C3PO noted. At his side, R2D2 beeped. “Well, yes, of course, but –”

“He’s right. She can’t stay like this forever. She has to get better. We need her. I –”

_Need her_. The words got stuck in the back of his throat, but he didn’t need to say it. They all felt it; that feeling of helplessness that filled the air like a cloud of smoke. It was not a feeling he was familiar with – and certainly not one he was comfortable with nurturing.

The other Generals had insisted they could keep going; Holdo had even stepped up to assume leadership, now that her own affairs were in order. There were planning to do, action to take, planets to evacuate… but none of that meant anything without her. Her absence in the control room stuck out like a sore thumb.

General Organa was the heart, the brains, the lungs and several other appendages of the Resistance. How could they go on when she was strapped to a bed, fighting for her life, with a disease they couldn’t even treat properly?

It wasn’t…

Fair. Fair would be the word he would use. But Poe knew that life was often not fair. People died all the time – so many of the people he had grown up with, trained with, drank with were no longer there. They died, the living mourned, then they moved on and kept fighting.

But without General Organa to lead, was there anything even worth fighting for?

“What about Master Skywalker? How’s he holding up?” Rose asked, before the uncomfortable silence drowned them all.

“Hard to say”, Poe shrugged. “He and Rey are in the forest training. We can only assume he’s holding up well enough.”

“And he hasn’t found anything? A solution, or –” General Holdo sounded almost hopeful.

“No. Apparently there’s nothing in the Jedi texts about it. There’s been… nothing like this.”

“A Force sickness... this could not mean anything good” C3PO said, pointing out the obvious in a way that made no one feel any better.

It had started weeks before. Like the rain – sudden, then all at once. Any Force-sensitive individual had found themselves falling ill, drained of their energy, some barely able to stand. Those older were hit harder: Leia had been bed-ridden since, and Luke had only pulled himself awake by sheer force of will. Rey had not been well, either, but it had not come for her strongly.

At least not yet. Luke had said it would, in due time. He predicted, if it was acting the way he imagined, it would spread to those who weren’t Force-sensitive eventually.

It was like an infection, running through every system of the body until it shut it down completely.

“Have you heard from Finn?” Rose asked Poe, on their way out of the medlab.

“Not in a while. Last we talked he was travelling to some remote moon in the Middian system”, Poe said, scratching the back of his head. That was another sore spot he was trying to figure out how to handle – Finn’s absence. Two years was a long while to go content with only a few holocalls.

Sure _he_ still felt the same way, but did Finn?

“Are you checking on him regularly? He’s an asset we can’t lose.”

“He’s more than that”, Poe snapped back, instinctively reaching to where the necklace around his neck used to be. “He’s fine. He’s holding on strong. Hopefully he will be back soon.”

At least he was hoping he would. Now, more than ever, his presence was essential around the base. Around him.

Poe sighed. He threw one last look towards the sky full of stars above, before he went back to his duties. He was just hoping that, wherever he was, Finn was really safe.

* * * * *

**PASAANA**

“Alright. According to the pirate, this is her last known location. It’s gonna be it”, Finn said, as his ship came out of hyperspace at the edge of a small, sandy moon.

At his side, BB-8 let out a series of small beeps, rolling back and forth.

“No, I don’t know how I’m gonna explain to General Organa why we’re short ten thousand credits yet, but I will come up with something.”

BB-8 wheezed.

“Yes, I will! Yes, I will! Don’t worry about it.”

The droid would, of course, still worry about it anyway.

The ship landed on one of the few living camps on the surface – in the region not mercilessly attacked by sandstorms. There was a body of water nearby, and the settlers had built a town not too far. As usual, where there’s a town, there’s a drinking hole, and that’s where you find information.

Some of the stuff drilled on him as a Stormtrooper had actually come in handy sometimes. Who would have thought?

The local saloon had a few figures scattered; a couple of Bravaisians, some Talpiddians, one or another creature he couldn’t recognize. In the back, two blurry, greyish beings were doing an arm-wrestling with some of their several tentacles to a small audience. Or at least Finn was hoping it was arm-wrestling.

At the counter, someone wearing a full set of armor was stirring a bubbly purple drink, while the waiter, a local, cleaned a jar with a rag that had seemingly never seen water before. Finn approached them, hesitant.

“Hi, I – I’m looking for a woman”, he said.

The bartender looked him up and down with all eight of his glistening red eyes. “It’s twelve credits if you got normal-looking bits. Twenty if you got some freaky thing going on down there.”

“What? No, I – what? No! I’m looking for a _specific_ woman.” He laid down a picture on the wooden counter – an old portrait he had found in some rebel files. “Her name’s Dhara Leonis.”

The sound around the room quiet down abruptly, as did the disgusting wet splashing of the tentacles rubbing against each other in the back. Finn turned around for a quick look, only to find himself pinned down on his back, a very sharp obsidian blade pressed against his neck by the armored figure.

“Who are you and why are you looking for Dhara?” they asked.

“I’m – I’m Finn!”

“Finn _who_?”

“Finn… Leonis. I think I might be her son.”

* * * * *

**AJAN KLOSS**

_Breathe in_ , said her Master’s voice in her head. _Let the universe pass through you. Scatter your mind_.

Rey tried. She held position, kept her eyes closed, still as the trunk of a tree. Her limbs had started to ache and the wind blowing on her eyelids was itchy, but she stayed firm, trying to honor Master Skywalker’s command.

They were both sitting in a clearing of the forest, in front of each other, legs crossed and hands pressed together, both fluctuating inches over the ground. The afternoon’s goal was trying to connect with other living beings through the Force – see what they see, hear what they hear. If all things carried the Force in them, all things could be reached through it. Luke’s goal was that perhaps they could find, within the roots that connected the galaxy, the one damage branch that was infecting all others at once; a task easier to accomplish in theory… but not in practice.

Rey found it was hard to keep her mind from wandering towards the medlab, and to her ailing mother. It seemed unfair to her – like a joke played by a trickster god – that she would have her mother taken from her after so long of them being apart; had it not been for Doctor Kalonia keeping her outside, she would have remained by Leia’s beside every minute of every day.

Luke understood that. He shared her concerns; especially with his own health not being up to its best form. Still, the faster they found a cure, the more they could spend time together.

But, for that, she would have to focus.

“Clear your mind, Rey. Let the Force travel within you”, he instructed, his voice growing more and more distance. “Rey…”

“Rey…”

But that was a different voice.

She opened her eyes abruptly, her feet landing hard on the ground. The forest had grown cold out of a sudden; the world around her had a strange tint of red, marred by the dark brown and yellow of the aging trees.

Something told her she was not in Ajan Kloss anymore.

“Rey…” called out a different voice. She turned around. Uncle Luke was gone. The trees had grown sparse. Dust clogged her airways, rising from beneath her feet. Something ran past her.

Not something – _someone_.

“Hey, wait!” she called. The person – a Shaull youngling, purple with red markings across their arms, continued to run without looking back. Did they not hear her? Could they not understand her?

But if someone is running, they are running either _to_ something… or _from_ something else.

Rey drew her saber in time for a swarm of First Order drones to close in on her. They shot at her, into the trees and the ground, flying in the direction of the running kid.

Not that Rey would let them.

She gave chase, jumping over rocks and fallen trees, her saber splitting one of the drones in half. Some turned and shot at her, while others pursued the child, shooting at the log they were using to cross over a ravine towards the thick of the woods.

The log broke and fell into the maroon river below, but the youngling had already skipped ahead. Rey jumped after them, pulling herself through the air – two droids fell in her wake, but two more still advanced.

She took care of one before it could shoot, but the other was too far ahead. The child tripped on their feet and fell, and it closed in on them, ready to shoot.

The Shaull raised their hand, teeth ground shut, and the drone stopped; it was not an act of surrender. A flick of their wrist and the machine was slammed against a tree, into a million pieces.

The child struggled back on their feet, their eyes focused on the crimson sky above. Rey turned around to look, in time to see a dreadnaught come out of hyperspace, its size overshadowing two of the planet’s three moons.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but no words came out. There was a familiar pain in her chest – a mix of fear, blind rage and sadness – that told her she knew exactly who was in that ship.

“Rey…” called a dozen voices again, from all around her.

And then just one. “Rey! Are you still with me?”

She opened her eyes. The forest of Ajan Kloss was back around her, green and beautiful as it had ever been. There were no First Order ships in the sky – just her uncle, looking over her with a concerned expression.

“You fell down like a rock. What happened?” he asked, helping her back on her feet.

She massaged the back of her head, where it had landed weird. “I am not sure, but… I think Kylo Ren is on the move.”

* * * * *

“Are you sure about this?” Poe asked, leaning over the table. “We haven’t heard anything about him in months…”

“It was him. I felt it. He was in that dreadnaught.”

She bit down her lip. The feeling… it was unmistakable. Like a hot knife passing through her chest. It was her brother’s presence, but at the same time, not entirely. Like an echo of it, or a shadow, smothered by a much stronger, much more malevolent one.

The small council gathered in the control room – Poe, Connix, Rose, Luke, Pava, Holdo, Aftab Ackbar, Chewbacca, the droids and anyone else of high enough rank that Luke had found along the way – looked at each other in worry. Since General Hux’s demise, the First Order had recruited several others to replace him, and they had scattered their forces abound; the Supreme Leader, however, had remained quiet, and while many thought it was because he had retreated to lick his wounds, Luke feared he had a more nefarious plan in mind.

“Why act now?” Luke asked, more to himself than the others. “Why only now?”

“Maybe he knows about General Organa”, Jessika said.

“Maybe he has something to do with it”, Connix pointed out. “I’m still not sure this is a Force thing – the First Order wouldn’t shy away from chemical warfare.”

“We would have figured out a solution if that was the case”, Rose countered.

“Maybe he’s being affected by it, too”, Holdo said. “Snoke – Kylo – you said he’s a leech, right? If he leeches on the Force and the Force is sick…”

“Exactly! Maybe he is looking for a solution, too”, Rey said.

“Or maybe he is trying to draw you out,” Poe suggested, scratching his chin. “He is baiting you into going after him, so he can get his hands on you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time that happened”, Rose added. “Remember Garel? Or Myrkr? Or Crseih Station, for that matter?”

“I’m still trying to forget that one”, Poe said.

“It wasn’t _that_ bad”, Rey rolled eyes.

“It was a nightmare”, Rose and Poe said, at the same time.

“We had to use my private connection with Finn to get us out that pit, and he was _not_ pleased about it”, Poe said, folding his arms.

“What was that thing he kept saying? ‘I–’” Rey started, but when Luke loudly cleared his throat, she straightened herself. “Anyway, this time it’s different. All other times, he sent foot soldiers, Stormtroopers, bounty hunters, or – or weird people wearing costumes, for some reason. This feels different. He wasn’t there for me. I think he wanted something.”

“Like what? An artifact?” Pava asked.

“I don’t… really know. Could’ve been.”

“What was the place like? In your vision?” Rose asked, bringing out the star maps.

Rey tried to describe what she remembered. It was different from a vision. Too real, too… but at the same time, she couldn’t have really been there, could she? But then who had destroyed the other drones?

Rose crunched her nose. “I think I know where you went. I’ve been learning the locations of other systems in case we need to evacuate in a hurry, and – I think I narrowed it down, but if it is where I think it is, it’s bad business.”

“Where is it?” Luke asked.

Rose pressed a couple of buttons on her pad, projecting a small, brownish planet for them. “It’s Dborian. It’s a mining planet.”

“Well, that makes sense, then”, Commander Ackbar said. “Wasn’t General Holdo’s intel that the First Order was mining quintessence in the Unknown Regions?”

“Yes, but this planet is not on the Unknown Regions. It’s on the Lazerian system, and they mine ionite there”, Poe said, with a worried expression. “I get what Rose meant. This is not a place we want to meddle with.”

“Why not?” Rey asked.

“After the Republic was destroyed, a lot of cartels resurfaced. There were no regulations, so they could do whatever they wanted. The Bombaasa cartel took control of this system; they made a deal with the First Order to supply them with material to craft their ships in exchange for control over the region. General Sato tried to purge them out a few months back but he and his squadron barely made out with their lives.”

“There is a blockage around the planet now”, General Holdo added. “Only supply shipments get in and out, and you need to have the right access codes.”

“Then we get them! It’s not that hard”, Rey interjected.

“It kinda is, babe”, Pava said, with a nose wrinkle. “They change codes in these blockades every three rotations. We tried with fake ones in the one they have on the siege over Ryloth and… well, I’m short of a droid now, so…”

“And you wanted to take R2 with you! Could you imagine?” C3PO said, offended. R2 beeped in agreement.

“I’m sure if we just took the Falcon there, we could sneak in and out before anybody noticed”, Rey insisted. She wasn’t about to let this one go, even if it was – how many were there against her?

Didn’t matter. She had to go.

“The Falcon would get you shot out of the sky before you could even come out of hyperspace”, Poe chuckled. “You’d need a ship that could get by unnoticed and the right access pass. You’d need –”

“You’d need _me_ ”, said a voice at the door.

“Oh no”, Poe whispered. Jessika looked like she had received every single birthday present at once.

Leaning against the frame, wearing a pair of shades – even though it was dark outside – and a studded jacket – even though it was also very hot – was a green-haired (and green-eared) pilot. He was handsome in a scruffy-looking way, which also generally meant he was up to no good.

“Who’s this?” Rey asked.

“The name’s Jacen. Jacen Syndulla. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Master Organa”, he said, with an exaggerated bow. “And look at that! Master Skywalker!”

“It’s been a while, Jacen”, Luke said, in a less-than-pleased tone, shaking the man’s hand.

“It has! Aren’t you glad my mom didn’t let me join your little Jedi school?”

“Jacen. What are you doing here?” Poe asked, grinding his jaw so tightly Rey thought he was gonna start spitting out diamonds.

“Well, I landed a couple of days back and I’ve been waiting to see if there were any new missions for me, and then today, the strangest thing happened –“ he made a flamboyant hand wave, leaning on Poe’s shoulder. “Something inside of me told me somewhere here, someone with perfect hair and perfect teeth would need my help. I knew it had to be you. And you know what? I was right!”

“As always”, Poe spit out.

“What… is happening, Kay?” Rose asked, in a whisper.

“Just watch it play out, don’t worry”, Connix assured, rolling her lips back to keep herself from laughing.

“So I heard you need passage to the Lazerian system. Me and the Specters can help out.”

“How did you figure that out?” Rey asked.

“Oh, I was listening behind the door while you guys were talking. I just waited for the right moment to do a dramatic entrance”, he said, with a dismissive gesture. Rey and Luke shared a look.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked her.

“I have to. We have to get to the bottom of this”, she said, breathing deep. “Even if it kills me.”

* * * * *

**PASAANA**

The last thing Finn remembered for sure before passing out was the distinct sound of glass shattering, followed by a painful sting – and then everything was dark. When he came back to his senses, there were two sets of hands dragging him around, with a bag over his head.

_Shit_ was all he managed to think. From experience, very few times could come out of being blindfolded and led somewhere – and he was almost certain Poe wouldn’t be there waiting for him once the bag was pulled off.

A guy’s luck only goes so far.

He heard a loud grunt before he was pushed onto his knees on the hard stone floor. Once the cover was removed, Finn found himself in a small, round room. Probably underground, judging by the rough walls and the lack of proper ventilation. There were about twenty or so people standing around, most of them wearing some kind of armor – but none quite as new or shiny as the one the person who’d glassed him before. They were standing by his side, the light of the torches reflected on the chrome of their helmet in a way that was almost supernatural.

Before him, there was a makeshift throne made out of pieces and bits of Stormtrooper armor. A woman was sitting there, sideways, her legs hanging from over its left arm; she was more metal than person, most of her face replaced by cybernetic enhancements, as had many of her limbs. She did not pay attention to him, choosing instead to focus on her robotic right hand, flexing it absentmindedly, as though to make sure it still worked properly.

The man in grey robes standing next to her was the one who spoke. “Who is this, Zarii?” he asked the masked warrior.

“Hi! Hey. I, uh, I’m Finn”, he said, coming off of his daze. Staring at the man was like looking at an aging mirror. “I – I’m part of the Resistance –”

“We’ve already told General Organa we will not join her suicide band”, he said, folding his arms.

“That’s not what he told us, Wraith”, said the masked warrior – Zarii, was it? – pushing Finn with their ankle.

“Right. Yes. Before I was in the Resistance, I was a Stormtrooper. But I – I defected, and –”

“It’s you”, the woman in the throne interrupted, suddenly. She turned aside, tumbling out of her throne and down the floor towards him. “My son. It is you, isn’t it?”

Finn swallowed back the tears threatening to flood him. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”

She cradled his face in her hands. It was a familiar touch that no brainwashing or conditioning from the First Order would ever allow him to forget; even the metallic touch felt warm and welcoming against his skin, the years apart from each other melting away like a terrible memory.

It finally felt like he was home.

* * * * *

“You have to forgive Zarii, they tend to be a little…dramatic”, Dhara said. She had whisked Finn away to a backdoor of the throne room, to what appeared to be her private chambers. It was a square room with a perfectly made bed in one end and a table for two in the other. It felt like he was back on his quarters in the First Order training facilities. “But secrecy is a key part of our… project here, and that is hard to do with people just walking around, asking about me.”

“What is your project here, exactly?” he asked, cupping the mug with – he wanted to say tea? Maybe it was tea – she had placed in front of him. “Are you, like, bounty hunters or something?”

She hesitated for a moment. “We are dedicated to resisting the First Order’s forces… but not like the Resistance. General Organa’s people are too passive. We prefer to attack _them_ before they attack _us_. We do it quickly and quietly, from the shadows, so they never see us coming.”

“So you’re assassins?” he stifled himself.

“I guess. In a way. Does that bother you?”

“Not really. We all do what we can to win the war, right?”

Dhara chuckled. “We are not in this to win the war. Our goal is to destroy the First Order, once and for all. To pay for what they did – to me, to all of us. To you.” She reached out across the table, placing her hand over his. “I never stopped looking for you. Not even for a day. I always knew, in my heart, that the Force would bring us together.”

“I wish it had happened sooner. I… there is so much I want to know. About you, about me, about our family –”

Finn had learned a great deal of things about his mother and her history in the last two years, pieced together from bits of information gathered from her past; but it was like a map riddled with holes, with whole chunks of it disconnected. It would be different hearing it first-hand.

“You don’t remember anything?” she asked, her voice heavy with sorrow.

“Not…really. No.”

He had tried to. For long hours – both when still in the First Order and after, trying to unlock some kind of deep repressed memory that General Hux and his goons had not violated. Maybe – he had hoped – maybe there was a mental block somewhere in there, like Master Skywalker had put on General Organa. He had even asked Luke to take a look, but there was nothing.

The First Order, after all, did not do sloppy jobs.

“You were young. Perhaps that’s for the best”, she said, tapping her metallic fingers over the table. “I just wish you would have something from your father to remember him by. He was a great man. You’d have loved him.”

“Who was he?”

“His name was Tryst. He was a farmer, with a brave heart and a kind soul. Always willing to help those in need. Sometimes…” she sighed. “Sometimes I wish I had never met him. In a way, he died without ever knowing me at all.”

She stood up. Bringing back those thoughts made her feel restless, and when she was restless, she was careless, and this was not the time for that. Still, she knew he deserved to know everything. “I never told him who I really was. I told myself it was to keep him safe, but it’s not it. It was shame.”

“Shame?” Finn parroted.

“I was an imperial loyalist in my youth. My entire family had been”, she confessed. “Both me and your uncle joined the Imperial Academy to serve the Emperor when we were of age. I was proud of that. At least until… until they found out I was strong with the Force. That’s when they locked me up and tortured me. When they tried to break me down.”

“What that when…?” Finn nudged towards her cybernetics.

Dhara laughed. “No. This came later. Back then, they wanted to turn me into one of their Jedi-hunters. The _Inquisitorius_ , they were called. They’re the Knights of Ren these days.”

“Were”, he corrected.

Her smile grew. “Is that so? Now that’s a story I’d like to hear.”

“Maybe later. How did you escape the Empire?”

“Your uncle and a group of rebels came to my rescue. Zare had joined the Rebellion, but I stayed out of it. I wanted to…to forget. I wanted peace. That’s what they gave me – a new identity, in a new place, until they thought things could get better. But the thing about the Empire is… they never forgave, and they never forgot.”

She rubbed her hand over the metal on her arm. Sometimes at night she’d wake up screaming, remembering the pain; others, she would feel as though she was whole again. Both were fleeting moments, and for better or worse, never meant to last.

“I knew the First Order was going after former Imperial members, but I was confident they wouldn’t find me, and I didn’t want to abandon my new life. When they came… your father fought them off, but they killed him, took you and left me to die. I would have given up, there and then, but the Force kept me alive. It told me I still had a job to do.”

She could still remember it. Every time she closed her eyes – the pain, searing through her body, as she dragged herself across the hard floor of what once had been her home, screaming her child’s name with whatever breathe she had left on her throat; how she had clung to Tryst’s body, not sure if he was alive or dead, not sure if _she_ was alive or dead, her agony turning to anger turning to hate, boiling in her veins, making her see red.

“It…it talked to you?” Finn asked, snapping her out of it. The Force had never told him anything! Was he doing it wrong?

“In a way, yes. It’s an instinct… a feeling. But it reaches out to every person differently. To me, it made me hold on to life until your uncle found me – he had become a formidable mechanic by then, and he put me back together. He’s been doing that since we started our mission to track down Imperial and First Order figureheads. Come.”

She gesture for him to stand up. With the pressing of a tile on her left wall, a window slid open to reveal a glass case – a trophy case. It had no medals or actual trophies, however, but rather much more valuable paraphernalia.

There was the blood-stained cloak of an Imperial Royal Guard; a collection of helmets from types of Stormtroopers he didn’t even recognize; insignias, medals and chevrons for every rank – from both the Empire and its successor; a pair of broken blasters; a Sith holocron; a prosthetic eye; charred pages from books; star maps; a preserved severed hand; among other things. At the center, a black helmet with a visor in the shape of a T, next to a cracked lightsaber handle.

“It belonged to a woman called Mara Jade”, she explained. “Though most knew her as the Fourth Sister. She was the only one from the Inquisitorius Program to make it out alive at the end of the war. Like me, she went into hiding; like me, not well enough.”

Dhara looked away, unable to stare back at her reflection, her mind a whirlwind of memories – some good, mostly bad. She had done many things over the years in the name of her fight against that tyrannical regime; whether they called themselves the Empire or the First Order, it was irrelevant.

But she regretted none of it.

“But this is the past!” she said, shaking her head abruptly, and away with those reminiscences. “Now we are looking at the future. The now. That is what matters. Come, I will show you the rest of our little hideout.”

* * * * *

**AJAN KLOSS**

“Are you sure this is a smart idea? Letting Rey and Rose go with Jace and his crew?” Pava asked, as she and Poe marched towards the Falcon, where Chewie, R2 and Threepio were already waiting for him.

“Jacen is a competent pilot and a trustworthy friend. I could not hope to leave them in better hands”, Poe assured, perhaps more to himself than to her.

“I know all that! What I mean is, aren’t you worried he is gonna spill all your secrets to them? I mean, if he tells them half the things he told _me_ …”

“Then I will kill him with my bare hands, as I’ve been promising to do for the last fifteen years”, he said, through gritted teeth. “But he knows better.”

“Does he, though?” she laughed.

He didn’t, and they both knew that.

“Are you sure you don’t want any back-up on this mission? It could also be a trap.”

“Our Fulcrum hasn’t let us down the last few months. I don’t know why they would now. If the message said they had vital information, then I gotta believe it.”

“Curse you and your good heart, Poe Dameron”, she said, with a tap on his shoulder. “It’s gonna get you killed one of these days.”

“Hopefully not this one”, he whispered to himself, before boarding.

* * * * *

“Are we leaving already?” asked a lanky blue droid as Rey, Rose and Jacen boarded the light freighter.

“Yes, AP. We came, we saw, we conquered. Now we are heading out to our next assignment”, Jace said, leading the way.

“But I have not yet finished updating my drivers”, the droid said.

“Sorry, but duty calls.”

“But you said I could finish updating my drivers”, the droid repeated, a little more insistently.

“I know what I said, AP. But now I’m saying something else.”

“Not updating my drivers puts the mission on a 75% chance of failure.”

“I didn’t even tell you the mission yet!”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, this is gonna be a long ride, isn’t it?” Rose asked, and she and Rey shared a grimace.

_Good thing we didn’t bring Threepio along_ , she thought. Now that would not have been fun.

The inside of the _Ghost_ was smaller than she had expected, but surprisingly colorful. Every wall had seemingly been painted over, decorated with images that they could only assume were battles fought by – what was it Jacen had called his squad? The Specters?

Rey stopped by one in the middle of the corridor, towards the cockpit. There were five humans – the green-haired baby with purple eyes in the arms of a dark-haired man, she assumed, was Jacen himself – a big purple guy she didn’t recognize, one Twi’lek, and one Togruta. She stopped, her eyes caught on the hardened expression in the last figure’s face.

“That’s the original team. My family”, Jacen clarified, when he noticed her looking. “My dad – he died before I was born. My uncle Ezra, my aunt Sabine, the Lasat and the blondie hugging are my uncles Zeb and Aleks, then my mom and my aunt –”

“Ahsoka”, Rey said.

“You know her?”

“I…I felt her. In the Force, once. I think. And Master Skywalker talked about her a few times.”

“Yeah. She was your grandfather’s padawan, and then she was kicked out, and then she went grey, and then became a Fulcrum, then exiled herself for some stupid reason. You know how dramatic these Jedi are.”

He rolled eyes, moving towards the cabin. Rey followed. “Were you – a Jedi? You didn’t go to Uncle Luke’s academy, but –”

“Nah”, he cut short, putting his feet over the dashboard. “This Force stuff – nothing good ever comes out of it.”

“That’s – I don’t think that’s true.”

“Isn’t it?” he asked, folding his arms behind his back. “Tell me one good thing that happened to you because of the Force.”

Rey opened and closed her mouth several times, trying to think of an answer. She had one, she was sure of it; she was just not sure where it was.

“It’s fine, doing strain yourself. You can keep doing your crazy magic stuff, lifting rocks or whatever it is you guys do. I just prefer the old-fashioned shoot-‘em-dead kinda way.”

“And that works every time”, said a tall Kessurian female, with white stripes around her face and montrals, stepping into the cockpit.

“Except when it _doesn’t_ ”, countered a dark-brown male Zabrak, coming right after her.

Rose and an astromech followed.

“Seems you’ve met the rest of my crew”, Jacen said, straightening up. “This is Tenel and this is Raynar. The little guy is Chopper.”

The newly arrived waved at them. Tenel took the co-piloting chair.

“Your crew is just…three people?” Rey asked.

“And two droids. But we make-do. Now…” he cracked his knuckles, turning the ship on. “How about we go on a little adventure?”

* * * * *

**PASAANA**

“Is this the prodigal prince returned?!” asked a big, blurry, pinkish Gen’Dai, standing up from his chair the moment Finn and his mother walked into what he assumed was their base’s cantina. “How’s it going, little Zekk?”

The Gen’Dai pulled Finn into a handshake that almost broke his fingers in half. For a guy with no bones, he sure as hell was strong. “Sorry – what – who –?”

“Give it a rest, Azrakel”, Dhara scolded, before turning to him. “Zekk was the name your father chose for you”, she said, and she smiled warmly, which seemed to take Azrakel and the rest of the crew present by surprise. “Personally, I like Finn better. It suits you.”

He had heard those words before.

Finn reached out to the pendant around his neck – the ring Poe had given to him before he had departed. It felt like a lifetime ago, and also just like yesterday. He felt like a different person since then, but that was a state he was getting used to.

He had been FN-2187. And then Finn. Then the Traitor. Then Finn Leonis. Now Zekk Leonis. He couldn’t wait to know who he’d become next.

While he mused to himself, Azrakel turned to his mother. “They are ready for you on the hangar.”

“How many?”

“Fifteen. One of them was injured. One died on the way over.”

“I thought you told me there were twenty.”

“Some of them changed their minds.”

“Is our post compromised?”

“No. I took care of it”, he said, pressing his hand over his blaster. Finn felt something move in the pit of his stomach.

“I have something to take care of, but I will be right back”, Dhara said, stroking his chin. She and Azrakel took off, leaving him stranded behind.

The place was different than what he had seen both in the First Order and in the Resistance – General Hux made them keep the eating quarters impeccably clean at all times; the rows of tables could not be an inch crooked, the floor could not be dirtied under any circumstance, and none of them dared to make any sounds while eating. The Resistance, on the other hand, didn’t have much of a common eating area – always on the move, they ate where they could, before going off to put out a fire somewhere across the galaxy. This new place kinda fell between the two: there were a few tables scattered around a sizeable room, but far enough that each group could mind their own business; the floor was dirty and sticky, and none of the tables had seen a good cleaning in a while. There was definitely a rodent eating through a bag of food somewhere, he could hear it.

He’d still take it over the First Order any day.

The only other people at the cantina were Zarii, with their feet on the table, accompanied by a Barabel and a Sabat. Tesar, the one-eyed Barabel, waved for him to join them.

“So, how are you liking our little hideout?” he asked.

“Well, it’s – uh – I haven’t seen the whole place yet.” Finn said, pulling up a chair. “Where did Dhara – my mother, where did she go?”

“To welcome the new recruits”, Zarii said, in a monotone voice. “The defecting Stormtroopers.”

“I thought – I thought they were going to the Resistance.”

“Some are,” Jovan, the Sabat, said. “But not a lot of people agree with General Organa’s way of dealing with the First Order.”

“So I keep hearing”, he said, leaning back on his chair.

“More and more are joining us. Since word about the Traitor went out, I think half of the Stormtroopers have been trying to jump ship”, Tesar added. “Imagine what we could do with that guy on our side.”

Finn let out a nervous laughter. “Now that you mentioned it…”

The three others shared a look. Or at least Finn assumed they did, it was hard to know with Zarii’s helmet and all.

“You’re joking, right? Tell me you’re joking”, Tesar said, leaning over the table.

Finn shrugged. Jovan almost lost it. “Your mother will go crazy when she finds out. We’ll fill this planet with troopers before the week’s end.”

“If you’re not a defecting Stormtrooper, how did you find your way here?” Zarii said, immediately curbing the other two’s enthusiasm. They were grasping at each other like they had gotten every Life Day gift of their entire lives at once.

“Uh, I – I went to Lothal, first, and then I – there was a stop at Abrion Major, and – and –”

“Ohnaka ratted us out, didn’t he? I told Wraith never to trust that _pirate_.”

The way they spit out pirate made it sound like a curse word.

“He did bring her Zekk back, so maybe we can cut him some slack this time”, Jovan said.

“That is not up for us to decide”, they said, pulling their feet off the table.

Zarii stood up, brushed a spec out of their armor plate – that may or may not have been there at all – and marched towards the door, leaving behind their plate of rations almost completely untouched.

Finn waited until they were out of his hearing range to turn to the others. “What’s up with them?”

“Don’t mind Zarii. They are always grumpy”, Tesar dismissed.

“Sure, but I mean – what’s the deal with the armor? Are they Mandalorian?”

Finn had met a group – family? Tribe? – of Mandalorians when he made a stop at Phindar. It had not been fun.

Jovan shrugged. “I don’t think so. I think it’s a tribute to their dad or something. I heard he was a bounty hunter.”

“I thought he was a clone trooper”, Tesar said, stealing some from Zarii’s plate.

“Either way. Apparently the fella was on a job for the Emperor right before the fall of the Empire, and he died on some backwater planet. Left the kid to grow up by themselves.”

“And they still want to honor them?” Finn asked. Seemed like an odd choice, all things considered.

Jovan shrugged again. “Gotta keep the traditions going, I guess.”

“And nobody’s ever seen them without the helmet?”

“I did, one time”, Tesar said, taking a sip of his drink.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. How do you think I lost this eye?”

He and Jovan laughed, but Finn couldn’t tell whether or not they were being serious; he wasn’t sure it mattered, either way.

Finn looked to the point in the corridor where Zarii had just been. There was so much negative energy around them – anger, frustration… sadness. Not only Zarii, but the whole base was clouded with it, and it was feeding on itself and growing.

This was not the first place he had felt that. He had hoped to be wrong – maybe it was the Force sickness Rey had talked about, giving him more than migraines and a stomach bug. As his travels continued, however, the pattern grew. People were tired; tired of fighting, of resisting, of dying, of endless cycles of war that tore their land apart without no sign of stopping. People were tired, and the more the First Order’s forces expanded, the more unrest would spread. Like a bubble, inflating.

But the thing about bubbles is that the only way for them to end… is to pop.

* * * * *

**SINTA VI**

Part of Poe was still worried that Pava was right, and they were about to walk right into a trap. Then again, every mission nowadays felt like that.

The First Order was growing every day, and every new battle was like an ambush. There were never enough ships, enough personnel, enough firepower; the New Republic had exhausted whatever resources they had left in the battle of Jakku, and in the aftermath, thy had been so busy trying to put the galaxy back together – coming up with legislation that would accommodate the wants and needs of so many systems into something comprehensible – that rebuilding their military power was not a priority.

No wonder so many ships and arms dealers had been eager to get in bed with the Frist Order, even when they were just reminiscences of the Empire. The New Republic didn’t expect a new war so soon, almost as if they had forgotten how lucrative war was for some.

This, plus the support of all those with grudges against the new regime – the occasional separatist cell still standing, the cartels, Empire loyalists, those who opposed General Organa… it wasn’t hard to see how it had grown, or worse, kept growing. The strides they had made the last few months had just now begin to tip the scale, and even then, for every Stormtrooper that defected, two more seemed to take their place. Poe had started to wonder if they were using clone troopers again, or if it was just the usual stealing-babies-and-brainwashing-them shtick they had going on from the beginning.

You know, if it works, it works…

He had hoped that, with Snoke’s death, things would be different – Kylo Ren had neither his mother’s temperament nor her leadership skills, and the story the Stormtroopers told was that he was only kept around for his blood lineage; for a brief moment, he had wanted to believe they would realize how much of a failure he (and by extension, his entire fascist organization) was and jump ship, physically and metaphorically.

His excitement was short-lived, however. Apparently Kylo had been possessed by Snoke’s ghost or some other Force nonsense, and they had been merged into one. Poe didn’t know much about the Force and the Jedi and all that magic stuff, but he knew it was a fitting end for Kylo, to be trapped forever in his own mind, drained by a leech until there was nothing left of him.

He had always been a little weirdo, Kylo; even as a child. Poe still remembered trying to befriend him on the many occasions he and his mother had visited General Organa, only to be coldly rebutted by him. He was glad, now, that nothing ever came out of there. He was also glad that he was dead.

Not that he would ever say it out loud, of course. Ren was still Rey’s brother, and over the last few months, she and he had become good friends. Sure, they didn’t have a lot in common, but they had both been mind-probed by Kylo and, more importantly, they both loved Finn a whole lot, so at least there was some common ground to work there. It did help that Poe’s quarters were right next to Jessika’s, where Rey had been spending an awful lot of her free time in-between training.

Something-something Jedi celibacy rules no longer applying.

“It seems we have arrived”, Threepio said, snapping his mind back to the mission. The Falcon pulled up in the orbit of Sinta VI, a small glacier colony in the fringes of the Mid Rim, where the Fulcrum had instructed them to meet.

It was apparently not the kind of thing they could simply transmit – especially with the First Order intercepting everything. That was a red flag and half in itself, but Poe was trusting his instincts.

He was just hoping his instincts wouldn’t fail him.

The ship reached the coordinates, past a forest of ice caves. Usually, there would be an outpost or a droid carrying the Fulcrum’s message, but this time there was a small TIE fighter waiting for them.

Chewbacca groaned.

“It’s not a trap, Chewie. Relax”, Poe assured, even though his nerves – and nostrils – were flaring up.

The Falcon paired up with the other ship. The fighter opened up and a black woman popped out, hopping from her ship to theirs.

“Not so fast”, Poe said, drawing his blaster.

“By the setting light of the twin suns, chill”, she said.

Chewbacca roared, opening his arms.

The Fulcrum ran to him, burying herself on his fur. “Hi Chewie.”

“You guys know each other?” Poe frowned.

“Of course! Chewie is my hold-parent”, she said. “And I’m Jannah.”

“Commander Calrissian, it has been too long”, C3PO hurried towards them.

“It’s good to see you too, bud.”

“Feels like I walked into a family reunion”, Poe said, scratching the back of his neck. But at least now he knew this wasn’t a set up… or was at least 50% sure. Considering who the current Supreme Leader was, family bonds weren’t guarantee of anything. “What was so important it couldn’t be transmitted?”

“I’ve found the location of the First Order’s main base of operations”, she said, pulling a flat disk from her coat. “It’s in the Unknown Regions. It’s called the Centerpoint Station. My sources tell me that all the quintessence they are mining is being taken there. It’s where they are building their new machine.”

“Don’t tell me it’s another planet killer. How many times do we have to go through this same stupid plan before they realize it sucks?”

“It’s not another Death Star, or even a Starkiller. It’s –”

She was interrupted by the ship abruptly shaking. Someone was shooting at them.

Outside, a fleet of TIE fighters had arrived.

“You were tracked?” Poe and Jannah asked, at the same time.

“Chewie, get us out of here!” he shouted. The Wookie roared in agreement.

“Wait, no! I have to go back! I gotta get back to my ship!” she tried to pull away, but Poe grabbed her arm.

“Are you insane? Even if you can escape them now, they know you’re the Fulcrum! You can’t go back to the First Order!”

“I have to! Listen – when General Organa asked who could act as a spy in the First Order, I jumped at the opportunity, ‘cause they are the only ones who know where my father is.”

“I thought – I thought he was dead.”

“He isn’t! I –” she hesitated, pressing her hand over her chest. “I know that he isn’t. And I’m very close to be proven right. But I _have_ to go back.”

It was Poe’s moment to hesitate. He knew she was right – had he been in her position, he would move every planet in the galaxy to know where his parents were, no matter how insanely dangerous it was.

And it was. Insanely dangerous.

However, the choice was taken from either of them as another strike shook the ship. Not them, this time, but nearby; Jannah’s TIE fighter going up in flames.

“Guess that settles it”, he said.

The First Order blockage stopped them from leaving through the same route they had taken in, forcing the Falcon to go deeper into the ice caves. It was a tight fit, and the blasts raining on their left and right didn’t make it any easier.

Lucky for them, they didn’t call Poe the best pilot in the galaxy for nothing.

He dove and pulled and twisted, spinning the falcon upside down – and almost sending Threepio crashing into the ceiling. Dancing around the dangerous curves, he dodges pillars of ice and falling stalactites big enough to impale a whole ship, a trick most of their assailants were not quick enough to pull.

Jannah, not one to be left behind, took on the cannon, firing down their pursuers with gusto. Part of her was hoping that, if maybe none of them came back alive, they couldn’t report her treachery, and maybe – maybe she could still continue her mission.

It was as stupid a thought as any, but it didn’t stop her from holding on to it while she mowed down the top of a cave, letting the hubris bury an entire row of TIE fighters on their tail.

Still, there were too many of them, and more coming out at every second.

The ship skidded past tight spots and circled around the edges, scrapping against the walls. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Poe said, to a progressively more aggravated Chewie, who was worried the Falcon wouldn’t make it back in one piece – and with good reason.

At his side, R2 began to beep loudly and nervously.

“What do you mean ‘something’s happening’?” Poe said. “Something’s always happening! Be specific!”

“I think he is referring to the tractor beam currently locked onto our ship, sir”, C3PO intervened.

“ _Seriously_?” groaned. He pressed on the dashboard buttons, but they didn’t seem to respond. “Damnit. We gotta get rid of these guys. We gotta lightskip.”

Jannah could hear him from the turrets. “What? Are you insane?!”

“It’s the only way! If they get a lock on us –”

“We can end up inside a planet core! Halfway through another ship! Or worse!”

_What could possibly be worse than that?_ He thought to himself. “Those all sound pretty bad already, but there’s no other way.” He took a deep breath. “You have to trust me.”

“That’s asking a lot, General Dameron.”

“I know.”

He circumvented the caves, to the other end of the colony. The path out was blocked by a wall of ice, but blasting it didn’t seem to do any good. “You think a ship can pass through it?” Poe asked.

Chewie growled a no.

Rather than slowing down, Poe pushed harder forward.

The blockage grew bigger and wider, and wider, and wider, and Poe’s hand shook as he held on to the brakes, pulling on it seconds before they could hit; the Falcon came to an abrupt halt, but the fighters behind it didn’t – they slammed into the ice sheet, one after the other, giving them a way out.

They pushed forward before the rest of the squad could catch up to them. The Falcon went into lightspeed for all but a second, coming out within a chasm in the Typhonic Nebula; but, unfortunately, so did half of the fleet still in the track.

“I thought TIE fighters didn’t have hyperdrives!” Poe shouted, slipping

“They don’t! They’re tailgating us!” Jannah shouted back, shooting down two of the closest ships. “We have to do it again.”

“Oh so _now_ you wanna do it again?”

“Desperate times, General.”

The Wookie roared in agreement.

Poe jumped again, flying into the Mirror-Spires of Ivexia; and then again and again, through the tall buildings of Naboo and clouds of toxic green gas in Cardovyte; and one more time, in the middle of open space, pulling a hard turn upwards just in time to miss flying straight into the gargantuan mouth of a Purrgil, which still nonetheless got to snack on the three ships that flew after them.

Then the ship jumped again, but this time not through its captain’s commands.

“What is happening?” Poe asked, tugging at the controls with little use.

R2D2 beeped in distress.

“What does that even mean? They can’t take control of it remotely!”

“They can, if they have a lock on your signal,” Jannah said, returning to the cockpit. “I guess that’s what the fighters were for.”

“And you couldn’t have told me this before? You were supposed to be our eyes and ears over on their side!”

“I was! I am!” she said, through gritted teeth. “It’s on my report – which we can’t let them get their hands on. The Resistance needs to act now, while they still can.”

“Well, they are blocking my signals, so I can’t get the word out before we are pulled out of hyperspace, into… whatever it is waiting for us.”

“Don’t you have technology to bypass this kind of blockage after Crait?”

“We do, but not in all ships yet. Someone –” he said, glaring at Chewbacca. “Doesn’t like people messing with his toys. Besides, it’s experimental. But…” he paused, the idea suddenly striking him. Of course there was a way to get the word out – better yet, one the First Order could not intercept. “I know what we can do. R2, can you reach BB-8 through my private channel with Finn?”

* * * * *

**PASAANA**

“Alright, BB, I’m going on a quick recon mission. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes”, Finn had said, before leaving. “You have to stay here and watch over the ship, okay? No matter what happens. You have to stay, in case General Organa or Poe or Rey need us. Do _not_ ”, he pointed with a stern finger. “Wander off! We don’t know what’s out there, and if you get damaged, we don’t have enough credits to patch you up again, alright? Do you get it?”

BB-8 nodded.

“Do you _really_ get it?”

The astromech nodded again, this time a little hurt by the lack of trust.

Finn then proceeded to pop off his collar and head into town – but that had been several hours before. Since then, from its vantage point in the sand wastes, BB-8 had observed the comings and goings of the locals; including the moment when two big ironclad figures dragged Finn’s unconscious body towards the unknown.

Now, BB-8’s first instinct would have been to go after Finn. Its second instinct would’ve been to contact Poe. That’s what its programming always told it – if things go south, Poe can solve it. Poe could always solve it.

But Poe was far away now, and Finn had complained more than once about BB either going head-first into conflict or trying to call Poe to bail them out. There was always a chance that this was somehow part of Finn’s plans, just like the thing with the Mandalorian tribe.

Of course, the thing with the Mandalorian tribe had absolutely not been planned at all, but the little droid didn’t know that.

So it sat and waited. And then it waited a little longer, until the sun began setting in the south, giving the sand a ting of blood-red.

And Finn was not back yet.

But BB did see one of the brutes that took him heading back into town… was that a good sign? A bad sign? Was there a third option?

If there was, it wouldn’t know. Just then, BB-8 felt a familiar vibration ripping through its body, as a holocall connected into one of its new secure channels. It could only be one person.

“Finn? Finn, are you there?” Poe called out, soon as BB-8 connected into the ship’s mainframe, projecting his image above the dashboard. “BB, where’s – never mind, it doesn’t matter right now! Listen, buddy. Our ship’s been captured. I – I don’t know where they’re taking us – it’s okay, it’s okay, buddy –”

The droid had pulled away, his sensors going into overload. Well, this was bad. This was very, very bad.

“No, listen, BB-8, listen! I need you and Finn to send a message to General Organa and the rest of the Resistance. We found the location of the First Order’s base of operations in the Outer Rims. I’m sending you the coordinates now. They need to act fast, before they activate the – BB, what’s – wh–”

Poe’s image became more and more distorted, until it was gone completely. BB tried reconnecting, but nothing seemed to work. And it wouldn’t.

“Hello, little droid”, said a voice at the back of the ship. The brute that had taken Finn, Azrakel, was standing there, holding a disruptor in his hands. “Sorry for breaking up the call, but I think you have something for me.”

Azrakel lunged at BB-8, but the astromech slipped past him at the last second; the Gen’Dai came after it at full force, tearing the ship in his awake as the droid zig-zagged out of his reach, desperate in its attempt at finding an opening to escape the ship.

BB-8 tried locking itself in a compartment, just long enough to send a signal to the Resistance base, but Azrakel ripped the door off its frame, grabbing the droid by its head before it could evade him one more time.

“The boss is gonna be very happy with what you go-”

His speech was cut short by BB-8 stabbing him with its arc welder, sending a jolt of electricity down his nervous system. Azrakel fell back, twitching on the floor of the ship, and BB bolted towards the entrance.

Too bad there was someone already waiting for him there.

“You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?” Zarii asked, their arms folded firmly against their chest.

Even under the helmet, BB could see they were smiling.

* * * * *

**DBORIAN**

“So, are we gonna talk about the Bantha in the room, or…?” Rose asked, to the surprisingly quiet crew squeezed together in the cockpit, right after they made the jump to hyperspace.

“I don’t register any Bantha lifeforms in my scans. Have you smuggled one on board?” AP-5 asked.

Jacen rolled eyes. “No, AP. It’s a figure of speech. I’m assuming you want to know about Poe and I.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Rey asked. It wasn’t that she was into gossip necessarily – but from what she knew of Poe, and what she’d seen of Jacen, it didn’t look like a pairing you’d see every day.

“There’s nothing much to say, really”, Jacen sat back, folding his arms behind his head. “Who hasn’t had it for Poe Dameron, am I right?”

Rose and Rey shared a complicit look.

“What I mean is, every guy in their right mind wants to be The One to get The Ring. I was no different.”

“What ring?” Rose asked. “Finn’s ring?”

“No. Poe’s mom’s ring. Y’know, the one he’s always got around his neck.”

“Yeah, I know. The one he gave to Finn, right?”

Rose realized she had said too much when the deafening silence fell around the cabin. Tenel and Raynar, squished in the back, moved around uncomfortably.

“He… gave…Shara Bey’s ring… to…the Stormtrooper?”

“He’s not a Stormtrooper, actually, Finn’s –” Rey started.

“I know who he is”, Jacen cut short, standing up abruptly. “Will you excuse me for a moment? Raynar –”

“Yeah, sure, got it”, Raynar rushed to take his place, while Jacen stomped off, Chopper fast in his trail.

“That could’ve been worse,” Tenel said, and far away they heard the sound of a muffle scream.

“I shouldn’t have brought it up”, Rose said, shrinking a little.

“It’s fine. He was gonna find out eventually”, Raynar reassured. “He just needs a moment.”

“Is he – I mean, does he still –” Rey looked back, worriedly.

“No. At least I don’t think so”, Tenel shrugged. “The thing with Poe was never meant work anyway – it didn’t when we were in the Academy, and it certainly wouldn’t now.”

“Why didn’t it work out?” Rose asked.

Tenel leaned over Raynar’s chair, ruffling her fingers through his hair. “Because Poe’s deal was always that he wanted to help people, by whichever means necessary. That’s why he quit the New Republic fleet and joined the Resistance, while Jace… well…”

“Jacen’s not strong on the whole ‘putting others’ lives above his own’, is what she means”, Raynar added.

“But he’s still part of the Resistance, though”, Rey noted.

“Yeah, now, ‘cause things got worse, but…” he bit down his lip. “Jacen grew up surrounded and hearing stories about great sacrifices – especially the Jedi’s. How his father’s Master died to protect him, and how his dad died to save everyone, and how his uncle Ezra was lost for years to save his planet, about the thing in Dubrillion that made his aunt Ahsoka go into exile… he was very adamant about never being like them, y’know? He’s never gonna jump in front of a blaster to save a youngling. Can you imagine someone like that with Poey?”

Rey couldn’t. Poe was many things – annoying and nosey being among them – but he was also brave and selfless. And now she had an ugly nickname to make fun of him for.

“So you guys studied together in the Space Academy?” Rose asked, to steer the subject towards clearer waters.

“For a while, yeah, but most of us quit”, Tenel said. “The New Republic was too boxy, too worried about regulations and protocols. Not that any of that helped them in the end.”

“Maybe they should’ve built a shield out of paperwork to escape the Starkiller blast”, Raynar joked, to which Tenel smacked him in the shoulder.

Rey felt a pressure in her chest. She hadn’t thought of the Hosnian system in a while. Her teeth ground together and she closed her eyes for a moment, the images of all that death and destruction flooding back to her like distant echoes.

She felt sick, her stomach twisted into a knot.

“You okay?” Rose asked, placing a hand on her arm, when she noticed Rey’s face going pale.

“I’m fine”, she lied, even though her nails were dug so deep into her palms it had broken skin.

“I think we’re here”, Tenel said, snapping their attention back.

“Good to hear”, came Jacen’s voice, from the end of the corridor. Chopper rolled out after him, rocking a brand-new paint job.

Raynar raised an eyebrow when he spotted it, but Jacen assured him with a ‘don’t worry about it’ before taking his seat back.

The ship emerged from hyperspace at the edges of a lonely, reddish planet. Anyone could see that whatever beautiful fauna Dborian had once had was long gone by now, drained by the massive machinery that could be spotted from space, surrounded by hundreds of cave entrances for their mining efforts.

There was a fleet of First Order ships circling the planet, including the threatening dreadnaught Rey had seen in her vision.

It was the same one, she could feel it.

“Tenel, is the Chameleon plasmic shell activated?” he asked.

“Sure is, boss.”

“Great. Ray, stay prepared, just in case things go sideways. AP, get ready to do your magic.”

“Are you sure this is gonna work?” Rose asked.

“Yeah”, Tenel assured. “The Empire used a very basic coding system; anyone could crack it with the right tools. The First Order basically recycled it. I don’t think they’ve even updated their software in the last few decades.”

“Hush now”, Jace said. “We’re opening lines of communication in 5… 4… 3… 2…”

“This is First Order carrier 634. You are trespassing into our blockage. Identify yourself”, came the transmission, even before he finished counting.

That was AP-5’s clue. Taking advantage of the connection, he plugged himself into the carrier’s mainframe.

“Turn around or identify yourself”, insisted the male voice.

“C’mon, AP”, Jacen said, through gritted teeth.

“Don’t hurry me. I’m not programmed to work well under pressure.”

“That’s all you’re programmed _for_!”

“Identify your ship or you will be blown out of the sky!” insisted the transmission, more forcefully. Rey and Rose held on to each other’s hands.

Thankfully, AP-5 unplugged himself before that. Though he could not make facial expressions, the droid looked really smug. “Done.”

The rest of the crew held their breaths in, until the First Order soldier spoke again. “All clear, YV-2248. You can pass through.”

“Let’s hurry before they figure out we left a bug in their system”, Jacen instructed. They had done that maneuver several times, and every time he had feared the outcome.

“You did?” Rey asked.

“Gotta keep them busy, right?” he winked, plunging the ship towards Dborian.

* * * * *

If the First Order infestation was bad in orbit, it was several times worse in the planet itself: TIE fighters patrolled the skies, and hundreds of Stormtroopers perused on foot, shoving villagers left and right, branding their blasters in the faces of anyone making even the smallest sign of opposition.

Corpses littered the ground; of those who’d dared to fight back.

“He’s here”, Rey whispered. Amidst the sea of voices calling for her, she could feel his presence – like a lighthouse at the edge of a cliff, a pulsing red beacon of hatred that was impossible to miss.

Jacen felt it too. “Right. Okay. We’ll draw out the bucketheads, free up the path for you to go find him”, he said.

“What, alone?” Rose interjected. She had heard of what had happened the last time Rey had been alone with Kylo Ren, and that was not a prospect that she wanted repeated. “You’re – you’re a quasi-Jedi, shouldn’t you help her?”

“You’re her friend. Shouldn’t _you_?” he countered.

“It’s fine. It’s my fight, Rose”, Rey intervened. “In the meantime, you try helping out the people down there.”

“Can you be our air support, Ray?”

“Sure thing, boss”, Raynar said, slapping a pair of goggles on.

“Great. Get ready to jump, folks. It’s gonna be a rough landing.”

“You tell me”, Tenel scoffed.

“Maybe I should stay back and help him out”, Rose suggested. The drop down was not exactly enticing.

“Nah, don’t worry”, Jacen dismissed, with a hand-wave. “Raynar will be fine. Shooting down First Order ships is his second favorite activity.”

“What’s the first?”

Jacen and Tenel shared a knowing look.

“Can’t we just go?” Rey urged, scratching the back of her neck. The voices were growing louder and more urgent, and it felt like something acid had dislocated in the pit of her stomach.

Jacen grabbed Tenel’s arm, and Rose scooted closer to Rey. Chopper beeped in excitement.

“Yeah, yeah, we know. You just wanna see the bloodshed”, Tenel sighed.

The hatch opened and suddenly the foursome was on their way down, with Rose screaming all the way to the ground. Jacen stopped the impact of the landing with a little help from the Force, and Rey mimicked him.

The downside being, of course, that it was a dead giveaway of their location.

“Don’t move!” shouted one of the Stormtroopers, right before he had a blaster shot passing through his helmet.

“Go! We’ll cover you!” Jacen shouted.

Rey made a dash towards the nearby woods, very much like the ones she’d seen in her visions, slashing a handful of troopers on the way. The squads converging on them turned their attention to her, but as soon as Syndulla opened fire, they realized there were more pressing concerns.

Like fighting a two-person army, for starters.

Jacen and Tenel had been doing that for a while, to the point where they had synchronized their movements – back-to-back, their moves were fluid, swift, with no room for error. He had his blaster, she had her dual pistols, and it was hard to see which was faster to the trigger than the other; none of them troopers had time to register it, anyway.

They led the way forward, weaving through the falling debris as Raynar shot down fighters over them, raining burning scrap over the battlefield.

Except it wasn’t meant to be a battlefield. There were too many civilians still around, some even caught in the crossfire.

“We gotta get these people out of here!” Rose shouted. She had been tagging along them; not quite as fast or quite as good, but doing what she could. Most of her shots missed, but thankfully, so did most of the Stormtroopers’.

“I know! Why do you think we’re shooting these bucketheads for?!” Jacen shouted back. The distraction got him a light scratch on the right shoulder from a nearby trooper, that was promptly buried under a falling pile of rubble.

“Head into the village!” Tenel instructed.

“How is that gonna help?” Jacen asked, somersaulting over two troopers before blowing them off.

“Smaller space. Easier to contain. Less things to crush us under!”

“Fair enough.”

They bolted towards the village, the still standing troopers hot on their tails. Jacen used the force to push a burning TIE fighter about to crush Rose into their crowds.

“That’s gonna delay them for a whi– oh, _carabast_.”

They had reached the village, alright, but it wasn’t the villagers there waiting for them – four purge troopers stepped out of nearby houses, circling them. Two had electrobatons, one had an electrohammer, and the last an electrostaff. None of them were very original with naming their weaponry.

“These guys are still around? I thought they were decommissioned”, Tenel said, her back against Jacen’s and Rose’s.

“Sure, but when does the First Order ever make things easy for us?” he groaned.

“Can you call air support?” Rose asked. She shot at one of the purge troopers, but they simply redirected the blast.

“Seems he is kinda busy right now.”

Above them, three fighters gave chase to the _Ghost_ , and it was barely dodging their fire. On the ground, the rest of the Stormtroopers reached them, positioning themselves around the four figures in black armor.

“Jace, maybe it’s time for that little extra help”, Tenel said, elbowing him on the ribs.

“I’m sure there is an alternative…”

“Yes, us dying!”

He rolled eyes. “Ugh. _Fine_.”

“What’s he –” Rose began, but the answer came before she could close her mouth: Jacen leaped forward, and when his hand touched the ground, the shockwave pushed the troopers back. His blaster handle twirled around his finger and, with the press of a button, unleashed a long orange saber blade.

“I thought you weren’t a Jedi!” Rose yelled.

“So? Not only Jedi got sabers!”

The tides of the fight had turned quickly, and most troopers realized it immediately: some backed away, while others stood their ground. Some had had no time to process it before they were being split open by a laser sword and discarded as Jacen sliced and diced through all of them.

Well, _almost_ all of them.

The first purge trooper stood firmly, their baton slamming against Jacen’s saber. Jace stepped back, in time to dodge the second one’s attack; he danced around them, Force-pushing one away while handling the other, his blade slicing off the trooper’s arm just above the elbow.

They didn’t even make any sound.

That was probably the most disconcerting part.

The other two came forward to their comrades’ help. Tenel and Rose helped, their blast shots distracting long enough for Jacen to get the upper hand. Still, even with their help and the aid of his acrobatics, he struggled against their combined assault – from one’s charge into another’s grip. One slip and he had the brunt end of an electrostaff against his face, slicing his left cheek.

“Is that all you got?” he laughed, spitting out blood.

It wasn’t, unfortunately.

Even the armless trooper stood back up, and the circle around him grew closer.

“We have to do something!” Rose cried out. “We have to help him!”

Tenel held her back. “No. Not yet.”

“But –”

“You have to trust him”, she said, a mantra she’d repeated to herself more times she could count. “Trust him.”

But Rose wasn’t sure. She watched, helpless, as they charged at him, all four at once, the crackling of their weapons filling the air with static. Fire had spread from the fallen ships and began consuming the nearest buildings, thick black smoke clouding the sky.

A trooper knocked the saber out of Jacen’s hand, while the other slammed the back of his legs, bringing him down on his knees.

“Any last words, Jedi?” the armless trooper in front of him jeered.

“Yeah. I’m… not…a _kriffing_ …Jedi.”

There was a moment of stillness; like the calm before a thunder. There was no clap from above, however, but rather a sizzling sound as Jacen’s saber flew through the air, its blade igniting just as it lodged itself between the edges of the otherwise saber-proof armor of the trooper – its weak spot. The blade pierced through the purge trooper’s chest and kept going, until it was at its owner’s hand once again.

The troopers left standing barely had time to process what happened.

He swung at the two nearest, faster and harder than they could counter, limbs flying off before their owners could notice their absence. Staffs and batons were torn in half, cast aside like broken toys, whatever fighting spirit their owners had unmatched against Jacen’s anger. Their bodies were soon to follow.

With three down, he turned to the last of them, who’d raised his electrostaff defensively. A flick of Jacen’s wrist sent it scattered away; another pulled the trooper towards him, floating inches away from his grip as he chocked for air.

“Okay, Jace, I think that’s enough”, Tenel said, hurrying to him.

Jacen didn’t say anything. His fist tightened.

“Jacen! I said that’s _enough_ ”, she insisted, grabbing his arm.

He pushed her aside with his other hand.

“Jacen Syndulla! Don’t make me call your mother!”

He flinched. For a moment, Rose saw his eyes flash yellow for a split second, before turning back to their natural color.

Jacen dropped the purge trooper, finishing him off before he had hit the ground. Something in his expression had changed. “Sorry about that.”

“You better be”, Tenel smacked him in the shoulder. “Come on, we have to hurry. We have to find the Jedi girl.”

“Wait! Wait! Are we not going to talk about what just happened?” Rose asked, looking from one to the other as if they both were about to spout a second head.

“I think we have more important things to worry about”, Jacen said, pointing east, where thick clouds of smoke came from, now accompanied by the loud sound of rumble.

That was where the Jedi girl was.

* * * * *

Rey ran. She ran through the dead woods, jumping over fallen trunks and across the dangerous ravine she’d seen in her visions. There were still fragments of drones among the rocks and broken branches – but there was no sign of any child. Nor Kylo Ren.

That could not be a good thing.

At the end of the forest there was a village. Most of the buildings were burning, and the ones that weren’t had been knocked down; some with people still inside. Some people had managed to escape, but they had not made much further than a few steps. The smell of charred flesh triggered her gag reflex.

What she saw ahead, however, made her stomach twist much more.

A youngling – the one from her vision – had just been dragged out of their hiding place, pulled into Ren’s grip. He had his hand pressed against the child’s face, draining a faint white light through the kid’s eyes and mouth.

_The Force_ , she realized. _He was sucking the Force out of them_.

“Stop!” she cried out. The youngling’s body fell, limp, alive but barely.

Kylo flexed his hand. “Took you long enough”, he said.

It was her brother’s voice, distorted by the mask but still nonetheless him – or what had been him, anyway.

She drew out her saber. “I wasn’t the one hiding out like a coward. What, were you afraid to lose again?”

Kylo drew his as well. “Lose?” he scoffed. “You and your Resistance have already lost.”

“Not from where I’m standing. Which one of us is killing children to survive?” she asked, circling him; a hunter and its prey, but hard to say which was which.

“But surviving still. More than can be said about your mother.”

Rey lunged at him, teeth bared, anger pumping in her ears. Their blades clashed, red on blue, and the ground under their feet shook; they had both prepared – waited, eagerly even – for this moment, and there was no coming back now.

She pulled back first, only to charge at him again, and again, and again. Her mind was clear, laser-focused, just as Uncle Luke had taught her. There could be no hesitation.

Ren knew that, too. He did not give; did not stumble. He knew her moves – the ones Skywalker had taught anyway. There was predictability in her swing, in her instancing, in the way she lunged and slashed at his legs. He pressed on, energized by his recent feeding, ready to match her strength.

Above them, the _Ghost_ flew low, chased by two TIE fighters. The sound of the burning engines was only matched by the hissing of their blades cutting through the air.

Well, and the occasional explosions.

But if they noticed the fires growing around them, neither seemed to care. They spun around one another, stabbing and dodging and stabbing once again. It was only when one of the fighters came crashing down on their fighting site that things changed.

A chasm opened beneath their feet, revealing the river of lava running beneath the ground. It tore the whole village in half, swallowing everything in its path – including them.

They could have moved over to either side and carried on their battle, but as the gap grew, it inched closer to the body of the drained youngling. Only then, faced with carrying on her battle or saving a child’s life, was that Rey hesitated.

But she chose the latter.

With a little help from the Force, she pushed forward, grabbing the kid’s body before it fell. Kylo backed away, lowering his saber. “Rey!” he called out, and in the way his voice trembled, she almost felt she recognized him.

The moment didn’t last long. “Next time, don’t hesitate”, he said, summoning back the last TIE fighter. She watched, cradling the child’s body, as he flew back to his dreadnaught.

Rey wiped the sweat off of her eyebrow, working hard to catch her breathe.

Jacen and the others caught up to her shortly after, in time to see the ship jump into hyperspace.

“I’m guessing you didn’t do it”, he said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“No. But I know what he’s been up to”, she said, looking down on the child asleep in her arms.

It didn’t take much for her to relate back to them the first moments of the encounter. Their reactions varied from rightful disgust to mild surprise.

Jacen. Jacen was mildly surprised. “Well, this royally sucks”, he said, folding his arms. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know when he is going to emerge again”, she sighed.

“It may take months”, Rose added. “And even then, we have to hope we figure out his location in time.”

“Not…necessarily”, Jacen said, pulling a transmitter out of his pocket. “We can know exactly where he is right now.”

“What? H – wait.” Tenel started, but then looked around. There was someone missing. “Where has Chopper been all this time?”

* * * * *

Chopper was, at that very moment, aboard the same dreadnaught they had just seen disappear into hyperspace. He, as instructed by Jacen – and armed with his new paint job – had sneaked past the First Order troopers, who didn’t pay him any attention. They, as per usual, did not much care about droids, as long as they didn’t get in the way.

And, as much as Chopper loved getting in the way, he had a very important job to do.

That is not to say he went by undetected. He was about to connect into the system when he was spotted by a 5-L unit passing by. It went past him, then stopped and turned back to inspect Chopper properly.

Chopper stuck his transmitter into the enemy repair droid, short-circuited it and dragged it into the nearest closet. Just in case.

The rest was easy.

Or, at least, as easy as it gets when one is breaking into a military facility, anyway.

And then it was up to them.

* * * * *

**PASAANA**

The feeling of dread impregnated into the walls of the base was almost suffocating. The members of his mother’s militia (the Deadeyes, as they called themselves) were walking around, loading their blasters, fixing their armors or boasting about how many kills they had gotten in their last venture against the First Order – some even talking about starting a competition of who could get the highest head-count, while others debated whether or not Wraith would allow them to start keeping souvenirs of their missions.

Finn did not want to know what those would be.

In his wandering around, trying to find a purpose in this new environment – his mother returned to her duties, busy with the new arrivals – he had heard something about their big mission; a plan that, once set in motion, would finally crush the First Order once and for all.

His ears had perked up and he tried getting more info out of them, but the guys he approached had chosen to play it coy. He could tell not many trusted him just yet.

The hard part was knowing if it was because he was a former trooper, or part of the Resistance.

He had considered reaching out back to the base. Did they know the woman they called Wraith had been his mother all along? It would have made his search so much easier if he had gotten a head’s up.

But then again, maybe they didn’t _want_ him to figure it out. Now that he was here, he was starting to have his own doubts.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know or be near his family… and it wasn’t like he was expecting them to be normal and well-adjusted, living by a beach in Sesid or something. Rey had shown him what she had seen in Mortis, and if anything, he was surprised his mother was alive at all.

Still, there was just… something, nagging at the back of his head, telling him something was not right.

His worst fears would be confirmed when he saw Zarii and Azrakel head to the throne room, carrying a disabled BB-8 under Azrakel’s arm.

“Hey! Hey, what are you doing?” he shouted, running up in front of them.

“Stay out of this, little prince”, Azrakel demanded, trying to push him aside.

Finn stood firmly. “What? Have you lost it? That’s my droid! What are you doing with it?”

“Winning a war, boy”, Zarii said, knocking him aside.

“What is all this noise?” Dhara asked, when the doors were opened.

“We have news for you, Wraith”, Azrakel said, throwing BB-8 at her feet.

“A Resistance astromech? I think we have enough of those already.”

“Not carrying what this one had, we don’t”, Zarii said, pulling up a crystal disk. With a light press on it, it projected out a star map.

“And this is…?”

“The location of Centerpoint Station, ma’am.”

Dhara stood up from her throne. “You’re joking.”

“Poe Dameron has just sent out this message to your son. Apparently he was captured and needed little Zekk to deliver the news back home.”

“Wait, what? Poe was captured?! No! We – I have to – General Organa –”

“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter”, Dhara said, with a rejuvenated glow in her eyes.

“ _It doesn’t matter_? I have to help him!”

“We have more important things to care about right now.”

“Like what?”

What could possibly be more important than getting Poe back, before – before –

He didn’t even want to finish the thought.

“The plan”, Zarii said.

“Yes. The piece that was missing. It’s finally here. I knew – I knew you were the answer, my son. It was always meant to be you.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t –”

He couldn’t even think straight. If Poe was captured, then something terrible had to have happened. The only other time he had been in the First Order’s hand, the two of them had barely managed to make it out alive.

And this time, Finn wasn’t sure another deserter was gonna step in and help.

“Finn. Listen to me.” She cradled his face on her hands again, but this time there was no warmth to her touch. He felt sick. “The plan is what matters. The plan’s what has always mattered. This is how we win. How _I_ win.”

“How? By – by knowing the location of their base?”

“By destroying it. It and everything and everyone inside. We cut off the head of the beast and the body dies.”

“But you – you – you don’t even have a fleet or – or firepower.”

“We do have power”, she corrected him. Reaching inside her shirt, Dhara pulled out a finger-sized glass vial, where a white liquid moved inside.

“What is –”

“It’s an anti-matter bomb”, she said.

He stepped back, mouth agape in horror. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am. Completely.”

“How did you even get your hands on it?!”

“I have contacts. Off-galaxy. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does! It does matter! There is a reason why not even the First Order uses anti-matter on their weapons!” he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to get a grasp of the situation. How did it manage to go from bad to worst so quickly? “Mom – one drop of it can destroy an entire planet. The amount you have –”

“Can destroy the First Order once and for all.”

“No! It can wipe out half the galaxy! You have no idea –”

“I know exactly what it can do.”

Her voice had grown cold and impersonal, her lips pressed tightly into a fine line. Her shoulders straightened and head held high, he could suddenly understand why so many feared her.

“I know exactly what I have to do. What I have been planning, _preparing_ to do. I know what the First Order took from me – from us, all of us – and I finally can strike back. And I will do it, with…” she looked over to Azrakel, behind him. “…or without you.”

Before Finn could process it, a strong pair of arms was wrapped around him, lifting him off the ground. He struggled against the Gen’Dai’s grip, but it was useless.

“Mom! Mom, you can’t do this! Listen to me! Mom! Mom, listen to me! MOM!”

His screams echoed through the corridors, matched by the sound of Azrakel’s footsteps as he carried him to a cell chamber, deep underground.

He was thrown on the floor, at the bottom of a staircase, in a claustrophobically small chamber, with nothing but a slab of stone for a bed and a hole on the ground for a toilet.

“You will stay here”, he heard his mother say, her silhouette lit on the light up the stairs, before the doors were closed. “Until you learn to know better.”

* * * * *

Finn paced back and forth inside the room. He didn’t know for how long – maybe minutes, maybe hours, maybe days. Okay, probably not days, but it sure felt like it.

He felt he was going to die of old age, trapped inside that death chamber – if he didn’t starve first, or if his mother didn’t manage to plunge the entire galaxy into a supermassive black hole, or whatever else he could expect to happen when the anti-matter was involved.

He tried using the Force to help him. First by unlocking the doors, and then by trying to contact someone. They could do that, right? Just – reach across the galaxy and snatch someone up. He felt like that was a thing that could be done. Maybe that was how the Force worked.

But probably not.

He ended up sat on the floor, tired of screaming, feeling even more helpless than that one time with the Ssi-ruuk and the probe droids. At least there he could trick someone into helping him.

That didn’t seem to be the case here.

Lucky for him, however, hope was not yet lost.

The doors opened again, a beam of light shining down on him. “Mom?” he called out, but it wasn’t a female figure staring down at him.

It was Uncle Zare.

“Come on, hurry, we have no time to lose”, he said, stretching out his hand for him.

Finn took it without a second thought.

“What happened? Where is everyone?” he asked.

“They left. Your mother took everyone willing to fight and left.”

“But you – why are you here? Why are you helping me?”

“I refused to go on her suicide mission. I love my sister, even when she doesn’t love herself enough to realize her plan will kill more than just the First Order.”

“Then why not stop her?”

“I’ve tried, but I could not do it. I can’t do it. _You_ can.”

Finn wasn’t so sure about that. He had felt his mother’s anger; her hatred burned like something he had never seen before. It was just… dark.

He didn’t think there was any way to bring her back into the light. Not without drastic measures, anyway.

“Where is my droid? What did they do to BB-8?” he asked, while his uncle guided him out.

Wait. Not out. They seemed to be circling through the pathways of the base instead.

“It will be fine”, Zare assured, opening a side door. Finn realized, a second too late, that he had been there earlier.

It was his mother’s chambers.

He almost expected a second ambush waiting for him. An attack from the back is bad, but one from the front when he was blaster-less sounded way worse.

There was no one waiting for them there, however. That was what his uncle was counting on.

“You’re going to need a little help ahead”, he said, opening Dhara’s memento case. He kept his hand pressed on the panel until the glass unlocked.

“I don’t think that’s a –”

“Don’t worry.” Carefully, he pulled the Inquisitor’s mask out of its stand. Reaching inside, he plucked out a small shard.

“Is that a kyber crystal?” Finn had seen the one in Rey’s saber. This one was… glowing, almost.

“It was your mother’s.”

“I thought she didn’t follow the Jedi path.”

“She didn’t. But after the war, before she met your father, one of the rebels who’d help us… a friend of mine, a Jedi, offered to train her. She took her first steps, but changed her mind. Now…” he placed it in Finn’s hands. The light in the crystal grew brighter. “It’s time you took yours.”

* * * * *

They found BB-8 in the ‘junkyard’ – a pit in the back of the base where they dumped the astromechs and droids intercepted, harvested and dismantled. Luckily enough, there had not been enough time to tear Poe’s droid apart. It was mostly in one piece – and, as expected, angry and ready to fight as soon as it was turned back on.

“Hey, hey, it’s me! It’s alright” Finn assured, when the droid tried to stab him with one of its many sharp, pointy tools.

BB-8 circled around him, beeping and screeching holo-images of Poe briefly flashing out of its port.

“I know, I know, buddy. I’m working on it”, he said, trying to pin the droid down in one place.

“We should get going”, Zare urged. “We don’t know how far into their plan they have already gotten.”

“How long ago did they leave?”

“Not long. I had to pretend to fix one of their fusion reactors to buy time while I thought of something. But with Dhara… every second counts.”

“Then we’ve already lost a fortune. Let’s go!”

But going was easier said than done. His ship was still where he had left it, sure, but barely: what they had spared of BB, they had taken from his ride, including the hyperdrive and the communicator.

By the time they got there, there was a gang of Jawas rounding up the machine to pick out whatever left they could. BB-8 had to scare them away with a blowtorch.

“Ugh. Scavengers. The worst”, Zare groaned.

“Not all of them. My best friend is a scavenger.”

“And my spices dealer is a Hutt. Doesn’t make them old slugs any less horrible.”

There was a lot to unpack there, but Finn chose to move on. “How are we gonna get out of here? Is there any other ship available?”

“No, kid”, Zare said, pulling a demagnetizer from his tool belt. “But you got the best mechanic in the galaxy by your side. I can get us out of here in a jiffy, don’t worry.”

To be fair, that just made him more worried.

* * * * *


	2. Centerpoint Station.

* * * * *

**CENTERPOINT STATION**

“Well, this is definitely not good”, Poe said, as he was slammed down on the cold hard floor of one of the chambers in the Centerpoint Station. His hands were tied behind his back, as were Jannah’s, Chewie’s and, for some reason, C3PO’s.

The droid had complained so much about it already, the Stormtroopers that captured them had almost considered shooting him. Twice.

They had settled on turning him and R2D2 off, which – if he was being honest – Poe was a little thankful for.

“Not good? We are about to _die_ , Poe”, Jannah said, through gritted teeth.

“No, we’re not”, Poe said, rolling eyes.

“Yes, you are”, said one of the five troopers keeping watch over them.

“Why didn’t you kill us already? You sure had the chance”, Poe asked, ignoring the very glaring looks both Chewbacca and Jannah were throwing him.

“Supreme Leader wants to have a word with you first.”

“Ooh, mind-probing. That is always fun”, he jeered.

“Are you actually enjoying this? Is this what’s happening here?” Jannah asked, slamming her shoulder against him.

“Obviously not, but… Kylo probably wants to use us as bait or something. These guys spent how many hours shooting at us? And they probably won’t even get to see us getting spliced up by Kylo’s stupid fire sword.”

“And that is funny how?”

She was breathing hard through her teeth – half exhaustion, half anger. After being captured, they hadn’t gone down without a fight; several fights, in fact. Once the Falcon had been parked inside the station, they had barricaded the entrance against the coming troopers, shot down several of them, stolen their weapons and made a run for the nearest ships, which unfortunately, didn’t have any hyperdrives.

So they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, with half of the Stormtrooper population on their tail.

Several blown-up ships, three destroyed AT-AT units and a corridor full of dead Stormtroopers later, it was a surprise they weren’t dead yet.

But if Kylo Ren wanted them alive, then they were probably still useful for something.

Probably nothing good, though.

“It’s just… for people like Ren, these guys are entirely disposable, right? Just ready to die on command for their cause! I mean, I don’t blame them, if they’re like Finn, they’ve all been brainwashed.” At the mention of the Traitor, a trooper on the corner twitched. “They are just cannon fodder for whatever Kylo is planning.”

“I don’t think this is helping”, Jannah said. Chewie growled in agreement.

“I’m just _saying_ …” he rolled eyes. “Why do we keep fighting? To make the galaxy a better place, right? To give everybody a chance to be who they want to be. But these guys… they are pawns for people Hux or Parnadee or Pryce or whoever is in charge now, and _they_ are just… losers who were nobody in their home planets, that decided to join a fascist organization so, what, they could feel better about themselves? To make them feel _superior_? And even they can be cast aside when Ren doesn’t think they are useful anymore. How many of them do you think are going to die once Kylo starts his new project?”

“SHUT IT!” shouted the lead trooper, smacking Poe across the face with the back of his blaster, hard enough that Dameron saw stars.

Poe spit out the blood from his bitten cheek, the smack not strong enough to wipe out the smug smile off of his face. There was always something entertaining about getting under a trooper’s skin. Sure he was about to be shot in the head, but it would be worth it.

Poe was sure the trooper would’ve pulled the trigger right there and then, had the commlink of one of his companions not beeped at that very moment.

Whoever came up with ‘no news is good news’ didn’t know what they were talking about.

“Sir, there’s a commotion on sector 7. They need all available units there, ASAP”, the trooper informed. “I think that includes us.”

“Right, then. Let’s get rid of these nuisances and head there”, the lead trooper said, charging his blaster.

“But – but sir, Lieutenant Mitaka said we have to–” started the trooper to his left, before he got elbowed in the chest.

“And _I_ said we get rid of them and head to the location. If there are already more of the Resistance in the base, these four won’t be missed.”

The other troopers exchanged looks – or, at least, Poe assumed they did – but were quick to fall in line. Suddenly, getting under the trooper’s skin didn’t feel like the best idea.

With the barrel of the blaster pressed against his forehead, Poe closed his eyes. He tried to focus on something, like a happy memory and the like, but all he could focus on was how tight those metal bands around his wrists fell.

And also how this was such a stupid way to die.

“On my marker”, the lead trooper commanded.

One, two, three, four shots.

Wait…four?

He opened his eyes when he heard the sound of bodies hitting the floor. The troopers had collapsed; shot from behind. There was only one left standing.

The one who flinched when Finn was mentioned.

“Is it true? Do you really know the Traitor?” the trooper asked, taking off the helmet. It was a young, dark-skinned human female; a couple of years younger than Rey, Poe would say. Far too young to be fighting someone else’s war. “Can you – can you introduce me to him?”

“If you get us out of here, it will be my absolute pleasure”, he guaranteed.

The girl ransacked the lead trooper’s body, until she found the command for their cuffs. Chewie roared loudly when his shock collar fell off – Poe knew the feeling.

“Okay, alright, alright, we need to – we gotta get back to the _Falcon_ ”, he said, wiring Threepio and R2 back online.

“I think it’s on sector 4”, Jannah said, grabbing a fallen trooper’s blaster. “Or was that the one we blew up?”

“No, that was sector 2. What’s in sector 7?”

“I don’t…really know”, the trooper hesitated. “I’ve never been there.”

“But can you get us there?” he asked, heading out into the corridor.

“Uh, sure, yeah, but –”

“Are you crazy?” Jannah asked, grabbing his arm before he could get much farther. “Didn’t you hear what he was saying? You want to march directly to where every trooper in the base is going?”

“We gotta help whoever is in there”, he said, pulling away. She and the rest of the troop followed along.

“You don’t know if they are Resistance or not.”

“The enemy of my enemy, right?”

“The enemy of my enemy sometimes is just a different enemy!”

“What do you plan on doing, then?”

“We can’t just walk around the base like this. We need – we need disguises, maybe –”

But that was a little too late for that. As they approached an intersection of the corridor, Dameron heard the familiar call of not one but two well-known voices echo – “Poe?!”

* * * * *

“Alright, gang, we’re approaching the coordinates. Let’s get ready”, Jacen riled them up, jumping into the cockpit with the rest of them. “The Chameleon plasmic shell will give us some time until Chopper sends us passes to get inside the – planet or dreadnaught or wherever it is he is hiding. Once we’re clear, we board, we grab the little guy, we bolt, and then we wait for reinforcements. Is that clear? Rey? _Rey_?”

He touched her elbow, snapping her out of her death glare.

“Did you hear me?” he insisted.

“You guys do the mission. I’ll go and deal with Kylo”, she said, gripping her saber tightly.

“Oh, so it’s a suicide mission now. Those are always fun”, Raynar joked.

“And also not what we signed up for”, Tenel added, from the co-pilot chair.

“Aren’t all our missions suicide missions, technically?” Rose asked, squished next to her. She reached for her half of the pendant, the memory of her sister still a sting deep in her heart.

“None of you need to stay”, Rey said. “Get the droid and wait for the rest of the Resistance, while –”

“You face a wannabe Sith lord by yourself?” Jace rolled eyes. “You can barely stand.”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s what I say every time I eat Mynock wings, but Tenel always knows I’m lying.” He rested his hands on her shoulder, like a wise mentor – if mentors had nose rings and green hair and tattoos. “You can’t just go against him again. Not alone. Not while this sickness is poisoning the Force users, especially now that he just had a feeding.”

“But if I don’t act now, he’ll escape again. We can’t know when or where he’ll resurface, or –”

“I think we can”, Rose said, leaning closer to the ship’s dashboard.

As they came out of hyperspace, the station rose into view, gargantuan in size; a shiny beacon amidst a sea of darkness. A spherical structure with two mounts from either size, it was the only thing for thousands of light-years around.

“What is this place?” Rey asked.

“I think – _carabast_ , I think that’s the Centerpoint Station”, Jacen said, barely managing to pick up his chin off the floor. “That’s the First Order’s command center.”

“I thought they were spread out through the Outer Rim planets.”

“Us, too”, Raynar said. “Their manufacturers are there, most of their support comes from there, so we assumed –”

“We assumed there was no such thing”, Tenel completed. “Nobody ever caught a whiff of it. Not even the defected Stormtroopers could tell us about it.”

“No wonder why”, Rose said, bringing out a star map. “This is _way_ outside the known regions. There’s no way to just…stumble upon this place. It’s a good thing Chopper locked down the coordinates.”

“It’s a good thing it’s not a Death Star, too, so they can’t move it around”, Jace said, a little more smugly. “Let’s get in on it then. Tenel, have you made contact with Chopper?”

“Just got it, chief. He’s beaming me the passcodes.”

The closer they got to the station, however, the more it looked like those wouldn’t be _that_ necessary. The wing of a TIE fighter flew past them; similar chunks would come into view as they grew closer, some with the pilots still attached on.

Or at least whatever was left of them.

“Did the Resistance get here before us?” Rey asked, from over Rose’s shoulder.

“Wouldn’t we have been informed?” Jacen countered. He didn’t sound very confident.

They docked the ship on hangar 5, to little fanfare. Raynar was expecting at least a few Stormtroopers to come and greet them, but for better or worse, they were on their own.

“Remember, AP,” Jace said, before they left. “If we are not back in twenty minutes –”

“Initiate the ship’s self-destruct sequence, I know”, the droid completed, to his horror.

“No! You leave and go back for reinforcements!”

“Oh. That is not nearly as exciting.”

Jacen knocked it on the head. “Remind me to reprogram his personality modules when we come back”, he whispered to Tenel, while they headed inside, blasters ready.

Chopper was supposed to be on sector 1 waiting for them, and they were expecting to have to fight their way there, but rather the Specters were met with empty halls, and only the vague, distant sound of machinery coming from the vent system.

That could not be good.

“It’s too calm. It shouldn’t be this calm”, Rose whispered. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Jacen and Rey shared an apprehensive look. Perhaps it was the Force sickness getting in the way, but there was definitely something wrong with that setting. It felt…sterile.

Worse. It felt like a cemetery.

“Can you sense him?” Jace asked. “Kylo – is he here?”

“I don’t know. I – I think so. Maybe.”

She tried to focus for a moment – cast her mind across the galaxy, or at least as far as the other side of the stupid station. She knew what Snoke-as-Kylo felt like, now, it should be easier to find him, right? So why couldn’t she?

But he had to be there. And wherever he was hiding, she would find him.

_After_ they got Chopper back, of course.

That, however, would prove to be a more complicated goal than they had originally thought – while there were no Stormtroopers patrolling on the way, the Centerpoint Station was still built like a labyrinth of corridors, splitting out in many paths that seemingly led nowhere, or right back to where they had begun.

There were many rows of locked doors, blocked windows, passcode-protected elevators; everything was shielded away from their reach, the secrets of the First Order buried deep beneath layers of coding. Some of it still leaked out, of course: every once in a while they would pass by a door that gave off warmth at the touch, amidst a gallery of other frigid ones. Another door emitted a low humming sound that apparently only Raynar could hear, and which made him scratch his left arm until the skin was raw.

Corridors and corridors of doors, all spotlessly clean to the point of shining, each carrying its own secret that the First Order was eager to keep – even from themselves. Being completely honest, that wasn’t really the problem, had it not been for the fact that there was also no signalization anywhere to guide them.

“Why didn’t Chopper just come to the hangar?” Raynar whined. “This would’ve gone much faster.”

“He is copying as many files from their servers as he can”, Tenel explained. “We gotta know what else they are doing out there.”

“Besides, is it a rescue mission if he rescued himself?” Jacen argued, pulling them right on a forked path. “Come on, this way.”

“Haven’t we been down there before? I recognize that window”, Rose asked, pointing to the clear view of the galaxy that took out half of the corridor.

“Have we? No, I – it doesn’t look familiar.”

“Literally all these corridors look the same!” Raynar groaned.

“Hey, hold on –” Rey stopped them, before they could get any further. She had just spotted a familiar face at the end of the left path. “Is that – Poe?!”

Hers was not the only voice heard calling out to him.

* * * * *

“They are definitely already here”, Finn said, leaving the ship.

They had reached the coordinates’ location – thankfully BB-8 always had back-ups stored, though Finn was less than happy with the glimpses of things his uncle may have seen on some of them – and boarded the Centerpoint Station, much to Finn’s dislike.

He had never been to the steel giant before. At least not that he could remember; though those gray walls didn’t feel exactly foreign to him. He had heard whispers of it during his time with the First Order, but then the station’s existence was more of a boogeyman than anything: the place a misbehaving trooper went to be reconditioned, if they spoke out of turn or tried anything that came close to rebelling against Phasma’s commands.

Finn felt a chill run up his spine, a memory long since buried of one of the many nights where he’d have to keep his crying low enough not to disturb anyone, lest they would report him to the commander and get him sent there.

The rumor was that it was not a place people tended to return from.

“Are you alright, son?” Uncle Zare asked, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Finn nodded, trying to swallow down the knot at the back of his throat. “I just don’t know how we’re going to find her in time.”

“I have the feeling we’ll just need to follow the path of destruction”, he said, pointing to the entrance of the hangar, where the feet of a fallen Stormtrooper could be spotted.

It wasn’t the only one. Through the next few corridors, bodies of both troopers and Wraith’s own personnel were lined up, on top of each other or against walls, riddled with blaster holes. If it was any consolation, the number of First Order’s troops fallen outnumbered theirs 10 to 1.

Still, it was not an easy sight to stomach.

“I thought you guys were all about stealth!” he said, in a strangled tone.

“We are… usually. But I’m not sure your mother cares much about discretion right now. She just wants to get the job done.”

Finn grounded his teeth. That was what he was afraid of.

They followed the trail of bodies down the hallways of the station, with Zare stopping every once in a while – either to check if one of his people was still alive, or to put a dying trooper out of their misery.

He had to turn away at that. He couldn’t help but wonder how many of them wouldn’t have defected, had they been given the chance – it was a battle, of course, there wasn’t exactly time to offer them an alternative, but…

Still. He hated it. He hated the knowledge that so many lives had been lost in vain; that all those people could’ve had different paths had the First Order never taken them.

Including him.

The First Order had to be destroyed. He was sure of that much. He just wished his mother would find a way to do it without blowing up the galaxy in the process.

“I think I heard something”, Zare said, stopping him before they reached a forked path. “Get ready – it could be a trooper squad, or worse, ours.”

“No, I don’t think it is”, Finn said, stepping towards the hallway. He recognized some of those voices.

Better yet, he recognized the face of someone at the end of that same hallway.

“Poe?!” he called out, running towards him, with BB-8 fast in his tracks.

He was not the only one calling out to him – when he reached the end of the corridor, it was only to clash into Rey, who’d done the same.

“Rey?!”

“Finn?!”

“You guys are not together?” Poe asked, just as surprised as any of them.

“No!” Rey said, after they were done hugging. “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here? I thought you came to rescue us!”

“Rescue you? I didn’t know you had been captured!”

“You didn’t tell the Resistance?” Poe asked, and they both turned to Finn.

“I didn’t have the chance! I was captured too!”

“What? I thought you were with your mother”, Rey frowned.

“Yeah, I was, it’s – it’s complicated.”

“I think that’s an understatement”, Zare said, approaching the rest of them. Rose and the Specters had done the same.

“Who’s _that_?” Jacen asked, with an arched eyebrow.

“This is my uncle, Zare – wait, who are _you_?”

“I’m Jacen. Syndulla. And these are the Specters, Raynar and Tenel. I’m assuming you’re Finn.” He turned to Poe, his eyes still drifting towards Zare. “You know what? I get it. I get it, now. What you see in him. I get it.”

“Shut up, Jacen”, Raynar and Tenel said, in unison.

“If you guys didn’t come here to get us _out_ of here, wherever here is, what _are_ you doing here?” Poe said, choosing to ignore his old friend, though his cheeks were burning.

“We came to rescue Chopper”, Rose said.

“And why is Chop here?”

“He’s tracking Kylo’s location”, Rey explained. “He’s…also here.”

“Right. Because of course he is”, he took a deep breathe. “And you three? What happened with BB?”

BB-8, who’d been running around in circles around them, beeped sadly.

Poe was horrified. “They did WHAT–”

“Okay, it’s not as bad as it sounds”, Finn said, defensively. “But it turns out my mother is the leader of an assassin group who wants to destroy the First Order.”

“Right. Because of course she is”, Poe groaned, hiding his face in his hands.

“Yeah. She also has an anti-matter bomb, which she is planning to use to–”

There was a round of gasps among group. Chewbacca roared.

“What do you mean she had an anti-matter bomb? How?” Jannah asked, horrified.

“She has great connections”, Zare said.

“And she plans to use it? Is she insane?”

Finn and his uncle looked at each other for a moment. “Kind of?”

“That is just fantastic”, she groaned.

“Who are you, again?” Finn asked. “Sorry, there’s just – a lot of people. I’m confused.”

“I’m Jannah. I was a spy for the Resistance.”

“You’re Jannah Calrissian. Lando’s daughter”, Rey said, barely managing to swallow the nod in her throat. “I’m sorry – I’m so sorry about… your father, he…”

“I know”, she said, even though her face said otherwise. “But don’t worry – I know he’s still alive. Somewhere. That’s why I was here, to find that information, but…I guess there are other priorities at the moment.”

“Like us not dying horribly, you mean”, Tenel said.

“If we leave now, maybe we can outrun the explosion,” Raynar suggested. “We’re far away, right? Even from the Outer Rims, maybe…maybe…”

“The probability of that happening is -634%”, Threepio said, to which R2D2 replied with a series of angry beeps that made Jacen cringe. “I’m just _saying_ , R2. Not even General Dameron could outrun the fallout of an anti-matter explosion, and we certainly don’t have a vessel that could–”

“We get it. We get it”, Jacen said, through gritted teeth.

“The droid is right. It’s not just about out-running the blast”, Zare added. “Even if the galaxy didn’t crack open like an egg, it would still be impossible to escape it. Think about what happened in the Hosnian system – the pieces of those planets rained down on the neighborhood systems. Some are still travelling. There are entire sectors that became inhospitable. Now imagine that happening to hundreds of millions of planets.”

“We won’t let that happen”, Rey assured. She had dug her nails against the palm of her hand again, blood dripping down to her feet.

“Uh – folks? I don’t think that’s the only thing we have to worry about”, Rose said. She had stepped a little further into the corridor, her eyes glued into the big windows that gave view to the emptiness of the galaxy behind them.

Except it wasn’t quite as empty anymore.

Hundreds of ships, from freighters to dreadnaughts, had come out of hyperspace around the station, with more and more coming out by the second.

“Any chance those are our guys?” Poe asked, a little too hopeful.

“I didn’t actually manage to get the message out there to the Resistance”, Finn said, with a wince.

“So we’re just trapped in here, stuck between a galaxy-destroying bomb…and the entire First Order fleet. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”

“Why are they even here? Is this your mother’s doing?” Rey asked. She had stepped closer to Rose, her non-bleeding hand grasping hers. It was hard to tell which one was shaking more.

“No, I mean – how’d she even do that? Wouldn’t they find it suspicious?”

“Not if they were under the impression that they are activating the Final Order”, Jannah said, folding her arms.

“The final what now?” Jacen asked.

“The Final Order. The culmination of all these years of planning. It’s what Leia asked me to investigate. Didn’t any of you ever wonder why Snoke was so obsessed with finding Master Skywalker?”

“Revenge?” Poe suggested.

“To possess him?” Finn chipped in.

“To find the location of the first Jedi temple”, Rey said.

“ _Bingo_. There is apparently a gateway there – some kind of portal to an alternate plane. It’s called the World Between Worlds.”

“I know what that is!” Jace exclaimed. “My uncle Ezra accessed it once, he – he saved my aunt Ahsoka. There was a portal in Lothal.”

“Yes, and it was destroyed. Like every other temple. Snoke was desperate to find the entrance, but a dark-side Force user can’t access it. That’s also why he needed Luke…or you”, she looked at Rey for a moment, biting down her lip. “When that plan fell through, he focused on finding other ways to get to the World Between Worlds. That’s what they’ve been building here – something to pry open the galaxy so he can get through.”

“But why? What’s in there?” Finn asked.

“It’s a doorway to the past”, Jacen said. “Several doorways, actually. You could access every moment in time you wanted…and change it. The Emperor wanted it, I’m not surprised Supreme Leader would want it as well.”

“The good thing is that, according to what I’ve read on Hux’s reports, they can only get the portal open for a few seconds at a time.”

“I thought we blew him up”, Poe frowned.

“You did. But I hacked into his data files. It wasn’t that hard, he had a stupid passcode”, she shrugged. “The problem is – those files were old. We don’t know how far along they may be by now. That’s why I wanted the Resistance to act fast.”

“Even a few seconds is too long”, Rose said, gripping her necklace. “All they need is to change one person’s life, and they would have total control of the galaxy.”

“Nobody is _that_ important”, Tenel countered.

“They could kill Master Luke as a child. Or Leia before she could deliver the Death Star blueprint. They could kill Poe – how many battles didn’t we win because Poe was in charge? There’s a reason he is the best pilot in the galaxy.”

“If Poe died, I wouldn’t have met him”, Finn said, more to himself than to the rest of them. “I don’t know if I would’ve left the First Order when I did, or where I did…I wouldn’t have met Rey.”

“ _Every_ person is important”, Rose continued. “Now more than ever, if we think otherwise, we don’t win.”

“She’s right”, Poe said. “We can’t let them turn that machine on – but we also have to deal with those guys outside, and the bomb. We need a plan.”

“And we need to hurry, too, because the moment they see those dead troopers, they’ll know something is up”, Zare added.

“Right. So we need to seal the base. Nobody goes in or out unless we say so.”

“Poe – what about the tractor beam?” Jannah asked.

“What about it?”

“They used it to pull us out of hyperspace, maybe we can turn it against them – keep them locked in place until we figure something out.”

“That’s a great idea, commander. We need to locate it.”

“It’s probably in the command center”, Tenel said. “Which we’ve been trying to find for a while.”

“I can get you there”, said a meek, sheepish little voice from the back. All eyes turned towards the young Stormtrooper, who’d been standing aside, watching their plans unfold.

“And who…is this?” Finn asked.

“She is the trooper that helped us escape”, Poe said, with a grin. “She is also a big fan of yours.”

“Right, right, that’s cool”, Finn said. He tried to play it off, but his ears were burning up. It was not the first time he’d met a defecting Stormtrooper, but none of them had ever stared at him with awe. “What’s your name?”

“I’m B-116”, she said, standing straight. “But my squadmates call me Bug.”

Poe winced. “Bug? That’s not a nice name. Finn – you wanna do the honors?”

Finn looked at him in confusion. Poe winked. That was when the penny dropped. “Oh. Oh! Right. How about... How about Bea? You look like a Bea”, he suggested.

The girl’s eyes sparkled. “I love it!”

“Great!” Poe cheered, clasping his hands together. “Then, Bea, you take the Specters to the command center. Activate the tracker beam and seal all exits. Nobody goes in or out until we say so.”

“I’m going with them”, Jannah said. She didn’t need to say why – they knew.

If they were about to die, she at least wanted to die knowing the truth.

“I’ll join them”, Zare said. “They may need my… expertise.”

He looked down at his tool belt, but that was not what he had been staring at before. Jacen smirked.

“Okay, alright, then – Chewie and Rose. You’re our back up. Take the droids back to the Falcon and try to contact the Resistance. They’ll need to know what’s happening.”

“I’ll go with them”, Raynar volunteered. “Mr. Chewie may need a co-pilot…just in case.”

“Are you sure?” Jacen asked. “You don’t know if they’re already inside.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

“But –”

“It’s fine, Jace”, Raynar insisted, squeezing his arm. “You’re not getting rid of your debt that easily.”

“What about you three?” Rose asked.

“We’ll find Kylo, the bomb, and Finn’s mother”, Poe said. “I have a feeling these paths are converging.”

And he would not be wrong.

The group split up in three, with Rey, Finn and Poe heading in the direction Bea instructed them – she, personally, had never seen the machine, but there were mandates for troopers not to get close to sector 7 unless stated otherwise.

She didn’t tell them how they managed to know which sector was which, but she seemed to have a pretty strong grasp on it.

Her instructions were clear: go right, right, left, right, left.

“No, it’s left, left, right, left, right”, Rey corrected.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not”, Poe countered.

“It is”, Finn said. “Look.”

There was another trail of bodies waiting for them ahead. Many Stormtroopers; several of Wraith’s people. Finn recognized Jovan and Tesar among them.

It looked as though they had died as they lived – miserably.

Finn had just circumvented another body when he saw a twitch in his peripheral view; or perhaps it was his intuition, warning him of a blaster being drawn.

“Poe, watch out!” he shouted, pulling Dameron aside just before he could be hit by the last blast of a dying Stormtrooper, who’d used whatever energy left he had to take on the intruders, before collapsing again.

“Thanks buddy. That was a close call.”

“Be careful, General, we don’t wanna lose you just yet”, Finn winked.

Poe pulled him back. “I missed you, you know?”

“I missed you, too”, Finn whispered, his hands on Poe’s waist, bridging the space between them.

Rey rolled eyes. “Guys! Is this the right time?”

“If not now, when?” Poe asked, breaking away from the kiss. “We are all about to die, anyway.”

“We’re not quite dead yet”, she said, marching forward.

And she almost believed it.

As they neared the end of the corridors, they understood why Bea had said they would know once they were there: the sound of heavy machinery filled the air, coming out of the only open door any of them had seen since they’d arrived there.

Out of that same door, followed by a gut-wreaking scream, was also Zarii Bliss; flung through the air like a rag doll. By the position of their limbs, it was hard to tell whether or not they were still alive.

Finn wasn’t worried about it. What worried him was the scream – it hadn’t come from Zarii.

“MOM!” he shouted, running into the room.

Dhara was there, alright: lifted several feet above the ground on a Force-chokehold by Kylo Ren. That had not happened without a proper fight: her blaster was on the floor by his feet, and so were the broken pieces of the left side of his mask, torn in the struggle. Around them, half a dozen dead engineers and their bodyguards; Azkrael and others of Wraith’s fighters, who had never stood a chance; dozens of cables of different sizes, plugged into outlets big enough to fit someone through, where massive amounts of quintessence flowed in and out of; scorching pillars that rose and left, filling the air with hot steam and a strange tinge of red; and in the back, a dashboard full of glowing and blinking lights, connected to a massive sphere that spun at incredible speeds.

There was a countdown in one of the screens, flashing red.

“ _Mom_?” Kylo parroted, mockingly. “Oh… I remember who you are, now. Dhara Leonis. I thought you were dead.”

“I got better”, she spat out.

He laughed. “Is that why you’re here? You really thought you would be able to change your past? Maybe recover a few limbs?”

In his rejoicing, Kylo failed to notice the surprised expression that crossed Dhara’s face as she realized what exactly the machine had been tampering with could do, followed by the realization that she hadn’t even needed the bomb after all – had she just been a little quicker…

“It’s too late”, he said, throwing her hard against one of the pillars. “I am the one in control, and once I open the gates, I will have access to the entire history of the galaxy. I will have my feast.”

“Like I would let that happen”, Rey said, drawing her lightsaber.

Kylo scoffed. “You could not stop me last time. What makes you think you can now?”

“Because she is not alone now”, Finn said, drawing his as well.

Rey was surprised to see it – it was not the white saber he had gotten from Leia. This was new; handmade, rough, with a purple blade.

“Let’s see it then”, Kylo said, igniting his saber.

Rey and Finn charged at him, and the three blades clashed with a sizzling sound. Right then, they could see that Kylo was rejoicing; and it was not hard to know why. He had fed well, and even after confronting Rey, he still had enough strength in him to match the duo.

Or at least he thought so.

He pushed them back; they pushed forward. Finn circled around, sandwiching the enemy between the light of their two blades. He was ready for it, however – all of it. Whichever way they attacked, his saber was there to counter, a split of a second faster. Rey knew what to expect of him already, taking the lead as they swung around the room, slashing against the tubes and cables and sending sparks flying across the room; Finn was not much farther behind.

Handling a saber came naturally him, like an extension of his own self. He had felt it before: the power that came from wielding the Skywalker saber, or one of the Tano twin blades, but this was different. There was a connection, now, like something had clicked. It flowed through him and outwards, the lightsaber and him as one.

Once Kylo intercepted a blow from Rey, taking the opening as a chance to kick her back against one of the pillars, he took charge, letting the energy guide his movements. He knew where much of it came from – anger. For all he had seen, all he had gone through, all others had been put through in Kylo’s quest for power. Even if the one blocking his swings was not the original Kylo, the real deal, he still had had a hand in his suffering.

But not anymore. Not after today.

Kylo had sensed it, too. “You’re better than last time”, he taunted. “But still not good enough.”

He thrusted his saber forward, but Rey intercepted it before he could do any damage. She locked their sabers together, pushing against him until they were face-to-face once again.

But like any déjà vu, it wasn’t a good feeling.

This time, however, it was not a planet about to be destroyed that separated them – instead, gravity took its tool and pushed them aside when the entire station was rocked to its core, a sign of battles happening elsewhere.

Either the First Order was shooting at them, or the specters had managed to activate the tractor beam.

Watching from the sidelines, Poe was hoping it was the latter. Things were already bad enough as they were without the bomb being triggered by an explosion.

Poe had managed to reach the back of room, but his attempts at stopping the machine’s operations had been futile: there were too many buttons and levers and keyboards, and the writing on them was on a language he had never seen before. His fussing around had managed to make the countdown stop, but there were still warning signs flashing around, and the buzzing got louder whenever someone had their backs slammed against a tube or had a lightsaber slash around cords. Worse yet, there was no way for him to know where the accursed bomb had been planted.

But he knew someone who did.

He spotted Dhara just as she made her way out of the room, struggling on her leg. She had taken the moment of confusion to sneak away unnoticed from all but Poe, who chased after her into the corridor.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, grabbing her arm. “You have to stop it before it’s too late.”

“It’s already too late”, she scoffed, pulling herself away from him.

“It’s not! You can still stop the bomb, or – or at least tell me where it is.”

“It doesn’t matter. What is done is done.”

“Are you really going to let your son die?!”

“He is not my son!” she spit out, backing away from him. “I did not nurture him! I did not raise him! I did not tend to him when he needed me most! He’s as much a stranger to me as I am to him.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. You have a chance to start again, to do right this time.”

“Time is not something either of us has anymore.”

She went further into the corridor, only to hear the sound of his blaster loading. Dhara turned, to see him pointing it at her.

“You wouldn’t shoot me”, she said, defiantly. “You love him – I can see it in your eyes. You wouldn’t hurt his mother.”

“I love him”, Poe agreed. “I would do anything for him. Including shooting you, unless you come with me.”

Dhara took another step back.

“Don’t”, he insisted.

She did it again anyway.

Perhaps, she thought, to call his bluff. He was one of the good guys, after all – one of Organa’s good little soldiers, always ready to fall in line. He wouldn’t pull the trigger.

He still did it anyway… but the shot was not meant for her.

He aimed up and above her shoulder, towards the control panel. One shot and the doors would be closed, and she would have nowhere to go, so long as he hit the target. It was a good thing Poe never missed.

But there was a first time for everything.

The blast froze mid-air, held in place by her tight grip. “You should’ve run when you still had the chance”, she said, through gritted teeth.

She pushed the shot upwards. The strength on it made it crash past the ceiling, bringing it down on both of them – and the rest of the hallway with it. Poe threw himself back, in time to avoid getting crushed by the debris. Through the smoke, he couldn’t tell whether or not she had been as lucky.

The station was rocked again, throwing him hard against a wall. Poe struggled back on his feet, forcing himself to run back into the run – to get them out of there, watch them die, or sacrifice himself, he wasn’t entirely sure, but he was planning it as it went.

He got there in time to see the Jedi and the Supreme Leader pull themselves up again. Poe considered aiding them, but there was no way to get a clear shot: they moved too fast, blurs of red and blue and purple, back and forth across the room. Kylo had moved from blocking and parrying to striking back; either with his saber, or by throwing around the dead bodies around them as a distraction.

Finn dodged the clash against Azrakel’s body before it could pin him against a pillar, laser-focused on his target. Kylo tried evading him; he somersaulted on top of him, ready for another blown on his back, but the Jedi was faster – sensing him, Finn struck first, his saber slashing off Kylo’s right arm.

Kylo tumbled, his back pressed against the dashboard; his lightsaber rolled away from his grasp, his path blocked by Rey, whose own saber had now its tip pressed against his chest. “It’s over”, she declared.

“Is it? Really?” he jeered. “Can you do it, Rey? Can you kill your own brother?”

In that brief moment, the voice that spoke sounded just like his, and she met his gaze through the cracked mask. She hesitated.

That was all he needed.

Kylo Force-pushed her away, slamming his hand against the control panel. The rings of the gateway swirled and hummed, louder and louder; the passage was dragged open, and as it happened, they heard the distinct sound of glass shattering somewhere within the console.

Rey would’ve screamed, but she had no time for that before a wave of white light swallowed them whole.

* * * * *

Rey opened her eyes to a blinding light coming from above. Her head as pounding, and it felt like it weighted thrice its size; the world around her was blinking in and out of focus, blurred details that made no coherent sense.

There was a vague memory of something important in the back of her mind, but as her sight adjusted to the scene, it faded away into obscurity, leaving behind nothing other than a sense of discomfort – a nagging warning that something was out of place.

But that didn’t seem to be the case. A quick look around her bedroom told her everything was where it was supposed to be; no thanks to Rey herself, who was really not the best at cleaning up her tracks.

Though, to be fair, as her brother would often say, that was what they had the nanny droid for.

That very same droid, Nanna – a combat-modified TDL unit – had just rolled into the room, looking as distraught as her usual self would allow.

“Miss Rey! You are awake. Wonderful! Your parents are waiting to have breakfast with you.”

“They are?” she asked, scratching her eyes.

“Of course! We are all very excited. Today is a special day!”

As she ready herself to meet her parents, Rey tried to remember what exactly was so important, but her mind kept coming up blank. There was a fogginess of sorts clouding her memories, and the more she tried to focus on them, the more her head hurt.

She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment before heading out. Everything seemed to be in place – and yet the short-haired young woman staring back at her felt like a stranger.

Maybe it was just the hunger. It does things to a person.

She walked into the dining area, to be met with her mother and father at the table – Leia was reading a holonet report, while Han had just finished answering a transmission.

Her mother stood up to greet her when she approached. “Look who finally decided to leave the bed.”

“Sorry, I was–” she started, but couldn’t finish it. Her eyes had caught on something – the windows behind the table had the backdrop of Chandrila, its high towers glistening under the early morning sun; and then, for a moment, the image was replaced by a red sky, tainted by the clouds of dark smoke coming from those same buildings, now burning and toppling down.

And then she blinked, and the vision was gone.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?” Leia asked, placing a hand on Rey’s forehead.

“I’m fine, mom”, she said, though it felt strange for a second, like _mom_ was a word she had forgotten how to use.

“Don’t tell me you got sick”, Han said, leaning back on his chair. “You know how much your brother is excited for you to be there.”

“My–” she hesitated. A series of images flashed before her eyes: a red lightsaber, a control room, a broken mask. Him. “Ben. Where is Ben? Where is he?”

Han and Leia shared a look. “At…the Praxeum, where he’s been for the past few years”, Han explained, with a raised eyebrow. “The place where we’re going later…but maybe you should stay home, kiddo. Sit this one out.”

“I’m fine, I promise”, she assured, taking a seat. It was the day Ben was meant to become a Jedi Master; she remembered that, now. A great honor. He had been talking about it for months.

Or at least she remembered so, but it sure didn’t feel like that long had passed. She felt like she had seen her brother just yesterday…

“Chewie was just telling me he and Malia are already on their way. They are bringing Waroo and Sirra along to see Lowbacca start his Jedi Trials.”

“Maybe he’ll pass this time”, Leia said.

“Third time’s the charm”, Han laughed.

Leia began to laugh as well, but suddenly stopped. When Rey looked over to her side, the seat she had just occupied was empty.

Behind Han, a crack grew on the glass window.

“Where did mom go?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Mom. She was just here.”

“What are you talking about, kid? It’s always been just us here.”

“What? No! She was – she was just here, and – and –”

“Who?” he insisted. The crack behind him widened.

“Mom? Leia? Your _wife_?!”

He shook his head. “Did you go out with some of those friends of yours yesterday again? You know I don’t like what you get up to when you’re with them.”

“No, I – I don’t think so…”

She stood up, rubbing her face. She wasn’t going crazy. She couldn’t be. Her mom – she was just there. She could still remember her face. She was… what was her name, again?

“Listen, kiddo. Why don’t you go get the old girl ready for the trip?” Han asked, tossing her the keys to the _Falcon_. “It’s been a while since we took her for a spin.”

Rey held it tightly. This was real. It felt real. It had to be.

Looking up again, she found herself alone in the room. The crack in the window had spread outwards, into the walls and the celling, and kept going. She backed away from it, tumbling on her own feet. The nanny droid’s voice was coming from another room, but she couldn’t tell which; it was distorted, flickering, there a moment and gone in the next.

It was accompanied by a ticking sound. Rhythmic. Constant. Approaching.

Rey ran out of the house, into the crowded streets of Hanna City. A cacophony of lights and sounds engulfed her almost immediately: in a second, people were passing her by, talking and walking, speeders flying by lower than regulations would allow – and the next there were screams and cries, falling boulders crushing anyone in their way, entire streets swallowed by fissures that tore the city apart.

The two sights blended in front of her, dancing before her eyes until she could no longer tell what was there and what wasn’t. The passing crowd of Embassy Row pushed her aside, some casting judgmental looks, while others seemed worried about her; but none seemed to notice the sky falling around them.

She, on the other hand, failed to notice she had been pushed around into traffic, or one of those said speeders coming right towards her.

* * * * *

The pounding in her head had become significantly worse by the time she came around to open her eyes again, as had the sense of dread growing in the pit of her stomach.

She remembered things. Many things. Things that contradicted each other.

She remembered going to work with her parents – the Ministry of State with Leia, and in her father’s trading company. She remembered sparring with Ben before he went to train with their uncle. She remembered a childhood with her brother, and Jannah Calrissian, and Lumpwaroo and Sirrakuk. A life without conflict.

But she also remembered Jakku. And the Starkiller base.

She remembered Kylo.

The thought of him made her pull up abruptly, shaken awake from her stupor. For a moment she feared he would be standing over her, but rather than that Rey found another familiar face staring at her.

“You’re finally awake! Hi. I’m –”

“Rose!”

“I was going to say Doctor Tico, but I’m guessing you already know me”, she laughed. “Please tell me you’re not recurring here.”

The ‘here’ she referred to was one of the emergency rooms in the Hanna City Medcenter. There were several rows of beds around her, but most of them were empty – at least for a second. And then in the next the room was busy, with more and more people coming through.

Rose, however, seemed to be a constant.

“How are you feeling? It was quite a tumble you got there”, the doctor continued, while she looked around.

“Do you know who I am?” Rey asked, reaching out to touch her arm. She could’ve sworn she saw the fogginess lift from behind Rose’s eyes, but not for long enough.

“I have to say, this is the first time I hear that question without it being an accusation or a demand”, she chuckled. “Are you having memory issues? The scans didn’t report anything, but–”

“It’s okay. I’m okay”, Rey insisted, even if she didn’t feel like it.

“It’s good that you’re feeling better. The guy who brought you in was worried sick”, Rose said.

“He was? Who is he?”

“Uh, I don’t really remember,” she laughed, with a grimace. “Sorry, my memory’s not the best.”

_Far from the Rose I remember_ , Rey thought. They had the same blushing cheeks, and the same stern eyebrows, but there was something different about her. She looked…

She was _happier_.

“He did leave his contact, though! And he waited for as long as he could, but I think he had to take a class. Or maybe give a class. Hold on.” Rose looked around her pockets, until she found the holocard with his info. “Here you go. He said to call him the moment you woke up, and if there were any bills or anything.”

Rey held up the little piece of Clari-crystalline. There was a name, in big bold letters, and his contact details. A picture of him smiling with his arms folded, air blowing on a breeze that wasn’t really there, accompanied.

She would recognize him anywhere.

“I’m gonna go talk to him”, she said, jumping out of the bed.

“I still need to asset your condition and –”

Around them, the hospital flickered, in and out, into a hellmouth.

“I don’t think we’ll have enough time for that.”

“Can I at least get your name?” she asked, before Rey ran out of the door.

“It’s Rey. But you already know that.”

* * * * *

The info in the contact card led her to the Defense Fleet Headquarters – exactly the place she expected to find him. Ships flew by, a moment there and the next, and she had to hope he was not in any of them.

It could not have been a coincidence that he had been the one to run her over. It had to mean something.

She was hoping it would at least be something good.

It didn’t take long to spot him amidst the wave of cadets hurrying out of the buildings; past their chatter and roughhousing, she saw him, surrounded by a flock of other recognizable faces – Tenel, Raynar, Jacen, all wearing the colors of the Academy, with the red bandanas around their wrists to indicate they were instructors rather than trainees. He was leading them, his jacket collar popped and smile shining brighter than the sun.

Poe Dameron in the flesh.

His eyes widened when he saw her in the crowd. Excusing himself from his friends, he ran to her.

“You’re the girl from the accident! I’m so sorry! I swear I didn’t see you! Were you hurt, did –”

“You don’t remember me?” she asked, gently placing her hand on his arm.

The fog behind his eyes dissipated, but unlike Rose’s, it did not return; instead, it was replaced with horror as the memories flooded back to him.

“Rey! But what – how – when – _why_ –”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. The last thing I remember –”

“The Centerpoint Station. The _bomb_. What happened?”

“I’ve trying to figure it out myself.”

He flinched, covering his face with his hands. She knew what he was going through: his brain trying to adjust to suddenly having two different lives playing out together in his memories, with no way to tell which was which.

“Are we dead? Did we die?” he asked, massaging his temples.

“I don’t think so. It is something worse.”

To highlight her point, the world shifted around them once again, and the shock almost knocked Poe out on his ass.

“What the – what WAS that?!”

“I don’t know either, but it keeps happening. And it is getting worse.”

In between the cracks in the sky, huge chunks of it had simply… gone missing, leaving before uniform black spaces.

“Maybe this is some kind of… of hallucination we’re having. Or a nightmare.”

“The both of us? At the same time?”

“Weirder things have happened!”

“Not like this. I can’t even imagine how we can fix this.”

“Well, Lady Jedi, we gotta figure that out”, he said, grabbing her by the shoulders. The spark of General Dameron, always taking charge when things got tough, was back on him. “Let’s gather what we know. What… do we know?”

“I know that my parents are alive. And together. Or – or at least they were until a few minutes ago.”

“Okay. Okay! That’s good. That’s a start! So your parents are alive, I never left the Academy… I’m guessing this is some kind of alternate reality? Maybe one where the First Order never formed. You know, like, a Utopia or something.”

“A peaceful galaxy.”

That made sense. She remembered a happy life, free of worries – never having to scavenge for parts so she could assure her next meal, or having to fight with a Nekarr cat through the heat of the desert.

Perhaps he had been right then. Maybe it was just a hallucination – but not a nightmare. More like one of the fading dreams she had had over the years where things were okay.

There could’ve been better ways for them to come to life, though.

“How are we supposed to escape a place like this?” she asked. “Where are we even supposed to go?”

“More importantly, what should we do about the others?” he gestured towards his friends in the back, still waiting for him. “Should we tell them?”

“Would that make a difference? My parents… they didn’t know anything. To them, it seemed like nothing was wrong.”

“But they weren’t in the station with us when it happened. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

“ _Rose_ was, though, and she also seemed unaffected.”

“You met Rose? Wait. Wait! She was the doctor!”

“Yeah. She seemed to be doing fine, but she didn’t remember me like you did.”

“So what then? Why do only we remember? I’m not Force sensitive, so we can rule that out.”

“But we were together when the bomb went off.”

“That means we have two other people to find. Finn…”

“…And Kylo. And at least one of them I know where to find”, she tossed him the keys to the Falcon. “Up for a trip to the Outer Rims?”

* * * * *

The Falcon came out of hyperspace at the edges of Ossus. The cracks in space had already reached the planet’s surroundings by then, and Rey could swear the number of stars in the sky had diminished.

But at least it was still there.

The Skywalker Praxeum sat at the top of a hill, one of the original Jedi temples repurposed as a school. It was also a set of smoldering ruins whenever they didn’t look at it right.

Much to Rey’s surprise, Luke was already waiting for them at the shipping hangar.

“You’re earl-” he started, before Rey threw her arms around him. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”

“Yeah…” she said. The cloudiness had not dissipated from his eyes, and yet she felt like, if there was anyone that could understand what was happening – if there was anyone that could have answers – it would be Uncle Luke. “But it’s complicated to explain, and we don’t have a lot of time. Can we do a mind link?”

He frowned. “Are you sure? If I recall, you were never a fan of those old mind tricks.”

“Things… changed.”

They held their hands together while Rey gave Luke access to her memories. Poe stood in the back, hand on his blaster; in this reality or the next, he was never really a fan of those crazy wizard shenanigans.

Rey could feel the flux of her memories passing from her to Luke. He flinched, but did not pull away.

“That is… not good”, he said, half whispered.

“Do you have any idea what is happening? Or why?” she asked.

He massaged the back of his head. “I think so. But it’s not good news.”

“When is it ever?” Poe asked, coming closer. “What is the verdict?”

“What I fear is happening is that, by detonating the bomb at the moment the gateway opened, Kylo Ren expanded its range of effect. It did not destroy only your galaxy – it shattered every other reality connected to it as well. They are collapsing into each other, all at once, until they are all gone.”

“You really undersold how not-good that is”, Poe grimaced.

“But is there a way to fix it?” Rey asked.

“I’m not sure, but there must be, otherwise you wouldn’t still be here”, he said, glitching in and out of existence for a second. “This…reality we are in right now, it’s a last-ditch effort by the Force. It’s using Rey as a tether, but it won’t hold out forever.”

“Wait, me?” she said, horrified. “Why?!”

“Your connection – our family’s connection – to the Force has always been different. Stronger. Also, you were the first to be hit by the blast, so”, he shrugged.

Rey wasn’t taking it so lightly. Blood drew away from her face, fear taking over as the realization of their fate settled in. “I – I can’t – I can’t do this. I can’t do this alone! I can’t–”

“You’re not alone”, Poe assured, reaching out to her. “I’m here. And Finn – if we can find him.”

“Finn! Yes! Maybe he is here!”

“I don’t have any students called Finn, I’m afraid”, Luke said.

“That wouldn’t be his name”, Poe said. “If he was never taken by the First Order, he would still be with his mother.”

“Right! Uncle Luke, you know anything about Dhara Leonis?”

Luke scratched his beard. “Hm… Leonis, Leonis. Ah, yeah, Zekk. Dhara didn’t want him to follow the Jedi path. I believe they still live with her husband in the Galfridian Farms, on Artorias.”

“Artorias – that’s in the Myto sector”, Poe said. “It’s right next to the Hosnian system.”

“The what?” Luke frowned.

“The Hos – never mind. We get him and your brother and maybe together the three of you can do some crazy space wizard stuff and stop this.”

“We just have to figure out how.”

“I don’t think you can stop it”, Luke said. “But maybe you can undo it.”

“What?” they said, at the same time.

“How?” Rey asked.

“Go back. To before it happened.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” she asked.

“There’s a way, but you’d need to reach the –”

And then he was gone. Faded in front of them like a wisp in the wind. But this time, he did not come back.

“Uncle Luke? Go back to where? Uncle Luke?!”

“Who are you talking to?” asked someone, from the top of the hill.

Poe flinched, and his gut reaction was to reach out for his blaster – but Rey stopped him. The man looking down to them was not the threat that they knew: in his ceremonial white robes, with his hair on a ponytail and a warm smile, this was no Kylo Ren.

“Ben”, she whispered, running to him.

“What's up womp rat?” he asked, while she hugged him as tight as she could. “Didn’t expect to see you here so early. Where are the old timers?”

“They... they are coming,” she said, in a strangled tone. Her hands cradled the sides of his face, but the fogginess behind his eyes remained the same.

“Alright. And who’s that? Did you finally get a boyfriend?”

Poe grimaced. He had to hold back not to say ‘ew’ out loud.

“This is Poe. He’s just a friend”, she assured.

“Do I know you from somewhere, Poe? You look familiar”, Ben said, scrunching his nose.

“You could say that”, Poe said, folding his arms. “Rey, shouldn’t we...”

“Right. Right. Ben, can you – can you wait for me at the temple? I will be right back.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Sure... are you okay? Is there something wrong?”

“Everything is perfect”, she said, with a smile.

“If you say so”, he scoffed. “And I thought I had the jitters...”

He trailed off, while Rey returned to Poe’s side. “So he’s not like us?” he asked, but it was more of a statement.

She shook her head.

“Why not show him the truth then?”

Rey looked back. “Because at least now I know there is somewhere out there where things worked out.”

By then, he was already gone.

* * * * *

The trip to Artorias was a quiet one – seeing her brother had made her feel worse, and watching as entire pieces of the sky either cracked open or disappeared entire did not make for a better experience.

The galaxy being swallowed by darkness wasn't exactly a pretty picture.

There was almost a sense of relief when Artorias came into view. It was a small, yellowish-blue planet, with almost every inch of its non-oceanic surface covered in farmland. Not exactly a bad place to grow up in.

“It’s not fair,” Rey said, as they landed on the outskirts of the Galfridian farm. “We can’t do this to him.”

Across the stretch of farmland, beaming with burrmillet stalls as far as the eye could see, sat a small barn next to a two-story house; there was a familiar face at the entrance of said barn, swinging around a pair of twins – about nine years of age, but still spitting images of him. The kids, a boy and a girl, would scream and laugh before he threw them on a pile of hay.

Rey and Poe watched that happen a couple of times, until a man came out of the house. He was handsome, freshly shaved, and he and his kids had the same deep, kind eyes. He shouted for the twins to come back in before it got dark, before he himself returned inside.

The kids pouted but did as they were told. The young farmer watched his siblings leave with a smile; once they had left, he went into the barn, unaware of the duo watching him.

“It’s not”, Poe said. He wiped the tears off of the corners of his eyes before heading towards the barn. “But we’ll do it anyway.”

* * * * *

Finn did not say anything after the truth was revealed to him. His fists were clenched tightly while he looked at the silhouette of his home in the distance.

“I always knew there was something wrong”, he whispered. “I could feel it. I didn’t understand it, but I could feel it. Now I see.”

“Do you want to go back and say goodbye?” Poe asked.

He shook his head. “They wouldn’t get it. It’s better if I just leave now. Easier that way.”

_It wasn’t_ , Rey thought, a nod growing in her throat. She knew from experience.

“Where are we heading to?” Finn asked, boarding the Falcon.

“We... don’t actually know”, Poe admitted, following along. “Master Skywalker mentioned something about going back and undoing it, but we didn’t have time to ask what he meant.”

“Maybe he meant back to the Centerpoint Station”, Rey suggested. “But there’s no way we can find our way back there.”

“Not even if Rose was here, with all the star maps in her head”, Poe sighed, wistfully. He threw himself in the pilot’s chair, with Finn taking the seat next to his; Rey perched herself with him.

“Maybe it wasn’t about a _where_ , but a _when_ ”, Finn said.

“You mean, what – back in time?” Rey asked. “I don’t think... that’s not possible.”

“Maybe it is”, Poe said, after a long pause. “You talked to Jacen, right? Did he mention anything about his holdparent? She was a Jedi, I think.”

“Ahsoka? The crew mentioned something...”

“Wait, who’s Jacen, again?” Finn asked. “The guy with the green hair?”

“Yeah. He was – is – he’s a friend”, Poe said, cleaning his throat. “He mentioned something about his uncle rescuing the Jedi lady through a portal.”

“RIGHT! The World Between Worlds!” she snapped her fingers. The other two looked at her with hesitation. “It’s kind of – I guess it’s a pocket universe? Or an alternative reality, maybe? It exists somewhere outside this one. It can only be accessed through some Jedi temples.”

“Like the one Lothal”, Poe said, but his excitement turned into a grimace. “But he said it was destroyed.”

“That was in the other universe, though”, Finn noted. “Maybe in this one it still exists.”

“Not really, I think it was destroyed by the Empire.”

“Still, there’s a chance, right, Rey?”

“It should still exist...” Rey whispered, more to herself than them. It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck her from top to bottom; a sudden moment of clearance.

“See? She agrees with me.”

“No, not that,” she dismissed. In the back of her head, she could hear faint whispers calling out her name. “The Hosnian system.”

The boys shared a confused look. “What about it?” Poe asked.

“It should still exist”, she said. “But when we talked to Uncle Luke, you mentioned it and he acted like he didn’t know what it was.”

“Maybe he is just not that good at star mapping”, he shrugged.

“Hosnian Prime was pretty important _before_ the New Republic settled there, though,” Finn said. “Besides, how do you forget an entire system?”

“He wouldn’t, unless it... never existed here.” She grabbed Poe’s arm tight. “Can you take us there?”

“Are you, uh, are you sure? I don’t think we have time to investigate a missing star system.”

“I’m sure. You have to trust me.”

He looked from her to Finn, who nodded in agreement. “It’s a feeling. You have to see where it leads.”

“If you say so”, he sighed. Damn space wizards.

* * * * *

Rey didn't know what she was supposed to expect. Maybe nothing. Maybe a clue. Maybe hope.

What she got was something else entirely.

“What... is that?” Poe asked, leaning over the _Falcon_ ’s dashboard for a closer look.

There was nothing where the Hosnian system was meant to be; no planets, no suns, not even a passing asteroid.

Nothing, except a massive gash right at the center of the system. A world-sized tear across the very fabric of the galaxy, through where deep dark light flew.

“It’s a wound”, Rey said, horrified. “A wound in the Force.”

She touched the glass gently, and even in the distance she could feel warmth emanating from it; a soft pulse, like the beating of a heart, calling to her.

“36 billion people died here”, she whispered. “All at once. 36 million voices silenced. It left behind a scar.”

“A scar we couldn't see because their sun went supernova and nobody could get close enough to look”, Finn added. In his search for his mother, he had more than once been advised to keep his distance; travelers had said the region was hazardous. They had no idea how much.

“I’m guessing the First Order mining all that quintessence didn’t help, either.” Poe said. “But if the First Order never existed, why is it still here?”

“I think... I think it is our way out”, she said.

Poe squinted. “What is THAT supposed to mean?”

“We have to go there.”

“Go where? You can’t be suggesting we fly INTO this thing!”

“I am”, she said, firmly.

“Are you insane?! We don’t know what’s on the other side!”

“We’ll know when we get there.”

“That’s crazy! Finn, back me up here, bud.”

“What other option do we have?” He asked. Around them, the walls were closing in – more than just metaphorically. The cracks littered the sky around them, wider and wider, ready to swallow them whole.

“If we die, I’m going to haunt both of you forever”, he said, thrusting forward and into the unknown.

* * * * *

There was no light this time. There was only darkness.

But that doesn’t mean it was a bad thing.

When Rey opened her eyes again, she was in a room – well, actually, not a room _per se_. There were no doors or walls or a ceiling. It was even hard to tell if there was a floor at all: she was standing firmly on a white panel that sprung forward, splitting into dozens of paths like the roots of a tree, with Finn and Poe holding her hand, each at her side.

At the end of each branch there was an archway, playing out a series of images – some that she only vaguely recognized, some she would rather forget. They all led to her event horizon at the other side ot the hallway, she and her brother with their sabers interlocked, frozen in time, the fate of the galaxy frozen with them.

“Are those your memories?” Finn asked.

She nodded.

“They are fading”, Poe muttered. She had not noticed; caught in the moment, it had slipped past her, but he was right. The one closest to them – her mother, father and a young Ben dotting over her after her birth – had begun to flicker.

“We have to move”, Finn urged. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen if they disappear.”

He was right. She knew he was right. If they had been brought to the World Between Worlds, then certainly the answer was there, they just had to find it.

But the path to salvation had one too many temptations.

“Wait”, she asked, stopping them abruptly, barely halfway there.

“What are you doing?” Poe asked, yanked back by her abrupt stop. “Rey, remember what we talked about – you can’t meddle with anything here. You can’t know what will happen if you do.”

“I know, I know, but this one is... different.”

She had stopped in front of the memory that hurt the most. Rey had relieved that moment a thousand times: she, screaming towards the sky as the ship – that now she knew carried Lando – drove away, leaving her behind in Jakku.

Unlike her other memories, however, it didn't keep replaying; instead, it glitched, scratched and damaged, before it could play again. Always right before the First Order ship crept into view in the corner.

“You can’t save him”, Finn said, with sorrow.

“Maybe I can try.”

“Rey–”

“No, listen – when Uncle Luke talked about Lando, he said he couldn’t find a trace of him anywhere in the Force. Even if he was dead, that shouldn’t have been possible. I’m thinking maybe... maybe it’s because I interfered. Right here, right now. A second chance.”

“How are you even going to do it?” Poe asked, rattled. “You can’t just – you’re not gonna just jump in there... Are you?”

At this point, was that too far-fetched a question to ask?

“No, but Luke was teaching me how to cast my mind across the galaxy. I was supposed to use it to find Ren, but this is even better.” She squeezed Finn’s hand. “But I will need your help.”

“Always”, he assured, and squeezed it back.

Rey reached forward, placing her other hand over the surface of the portal. It reacted to her touch, and for a moment it felt as tough the gateway was phasing through the stages of matter underneath her fingertips; it pulled her in, but Rey grounded herself into the ground, letting only her mind wander.

In doing so, the image stopped glitching. Instead, it continued playing beyond memory – it became a glimpse into the past, the sight of Lando’s ship flying through space with the First Order ship fast in his trail.

She knew, instinctively, what would happen next: they'd shoot him just as he jumped into hyperspace. The blow would damage his console and the ship would explode, scattering right through the here and the there.

But not if she could stop it.

“Lando, you have to go”, she reached out to him, her voice echoing in his ear as if she was standing by his side. “You can’t outrun them. You won’t make it if you try. You have to leave; take your escape pod and go. Now. Please. _Please_.”

“Rey, come on. Come on!” Finn urged. He pulled her back, until her fingers left the surface. There was a trickle of blood coming out of her nose.

“I told you it was a bad idea”, Poe said, hanging back.

“It wasn’t. I know it wasn’t”, she said, hanging onto Finn for support. “Look.”

The scene played out the way she expected: Lando charged, but the First Order ship was faster, blowing it out of the sky before he could cross over. There was a cloud of debris and dust floating around, and there was no way anyone could think there were survivors.

But only if you didn’t look close enough.

It was almost imperceptible – a little dot in the sky, far enough ahead that the scanners wouldn't pick it up. Flung out of the ship with a second to spare and picking up speed, in a crash-course towards the nearest solid object, but far away enough that it would be safe.

“You did it. You actually saved him”, Poe said, impressed.

“Do you really need to sound so surprised?” she laughed, wiping away the blood.

“Let’s go, before we end up saving someone else’s life”, Finn said.

There certainly were options – all the battles she had fought, alone or at their side, flashing in front of them as they went pushed forward. All the times they could have ended the First Order’s reign of terror, if they simply pulled Kylo out of the fight, or… or… or…

Too many ‘or’s.

The end of the road grew closer, forcing them to relieve the final fight over and over again, until the moment Kylo slammed the button to open the gate, triggering the bomb – then all turned into white light, only to start, again and again.

But seeing it play out over and over didn’t make it any easier to watch.

“So what do we do, then?” Finn asked. “Do we just jump in?”

“Is that possible?” Poe asked. “Won’t that be a paradox? Two of us existing in the same place at the same time.”

“I wouldn’t mind two of you”, Finn let slip, before his brain could tell him to shut up.

Rey rolled eyes. “I have a better idea. Hold tight.”

She placed a hand of each over her shoulder, while she turned her attention towards the memory. She waited for it to play out until the right moment – the one crucial moment, the one that would define everything – to place her hand on the surface. Again, Rey felt the pull of it while it melted under her fingers, but unlike the first time she didn’t fight back; she left it come and wash over her, swallowing her whole, while focusing her mind on a single, solitary thought.

_Don’t hesitate._


	3. Don't Hesitate.

* * * * *

Rey’s blade crashed against Kylo’s, grinding against one another. She held him in place until Finn had stood back up; when the other Jedi came forth, Kylo pulled one of the bodies from the floor and threw it against him as a distraction, but it didn’t work.

When Finn attacked, Kylo flipped over him, ready to strike him from the back – maybe add another scar to the one Finn was already carrying. Too bad he was not fast enough; it was Finn who struck first, his saber severing off Kylo’s arm and sending the red blade flying into the distance.

When he stumbled back on his feet, Rey was ready. She pressed the tip of her lightsaber against his chest, pinning him to the control panel. “It’s over”, she said.

Kylo didn’t look too convinced. “Is it? Really?” he asked, with a sneer. “Can you do it, Rey? Can you kill your own brother?”

Her eyes met his and she searched for a hint of her brother still in there. As she did, a voice came to her – her own voice, carrying with it a wave of memories that were not hers; at least not yet. The message, however, was clear.

And this time, she did not hesitate.

She pushed forward, and the blade pierced through his chest. Kylo gasped, shock coloring his face; Rey pushed it deeper, all the way to the hilt.

He put his hand on top of hers, but rather than pull it away, he squeezed it. “Thank you”, he said, in a rushed tone.

And then he collapsed. Like a pile of dust, undone in front of them. Rey stepped back, but she didn’t let her guard down: she had seen it happen before. She was ready for it this time, too.

Just as it had happened after Snoke’s death, a uniform mass rose from Kylo Ren’s ashes. It grew, twisting and revolving around itself, a thousand different shapes into one – the faces and forms of all the things it had devoured in its endless hunger. It was ready to lung onto Rey, she reached forward and froze it in place.

“What _is_ that?” Poe asked, aiming his blaster at it.

“It’s the Force Leech”, she said, her voice strained by the effort. “Finn!”

Finn didn’t need to be told twice. He slashed the creature in half, almost dropping his saber when the leech left out a blood-curdling scream. The pieces fell down, slowly melting against the metallic floor, until there was nothing left of it but an acid stain.

Rey fell down on her knees, the weight of a ton lifted off of her shoulders. Her hands were shaking as she struggled to put away her lightsaber, a scream stuck at the back of her throat that she couldn’t let out. Finn kneeled next to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. “It’s okay”, he whispered. “It’s over. It’s over.”

“Not yet”, Poe said, getting to the panel. “We have to get the bomb out of here, before it happens again. _Again_.”

The word lingered at the tip of his tongue, like a foreign thought he was struggling to reconcile with. He had memories in the back of his mind that weren’t there a minute before – a lifetime worth of them.

He looked back at his friends, as though he were seeing them for the first time. “Do you guys…do you remember…the other…”

Rey nodded.

“I had a life there”, Finn said, swallowing hard. “I had a family.”

“You can still have one, if you want to”, Poe suggested. “We can.”

“Maybe _after_ we find the bomb”, Rey said, struggling to put herself back on her feet. She was really not in the mood for their lovey-doveness. “And we still have to deal with whatever is going on out there.”

“We took down their leader…you think they’ll still put up a fight?” Finn said. His optimism, as always, remained unfaltering.

Rey tied her lightsaber back to her waist. “Let’s find out.”

* * * * *

Finding the bomb wasn’t as hard for Finn and Rey as it had been for Poe. It had a sort of…energy pattern, so to speak, that stood out against everything else. It was something that didn’t belong – not only to the console where it was embedded, but to the entire station. Maybe even the rest of the galaxy.

The imprint it left behind tainted everything around it; even touching it felt wrong. Finn wondered if carrying it around her neck hadn’t affected his mother over all these years.

It certainly didn’t help.

Pulling it out of the control panel was harder than finding it. Dhara had lodged it against the gears, so the slightest movement could trigger a reaction. Or at least they thought it had been Dhara – Poe was hoping his meddling with the buttons hadn’t made matters worse.

They had just finished containing the threat when their room was stormed in. Luckily not by Stormtroopers, but by a disgruntled Chewie, who’d been searching for them for the better part of an hour. He was followed by a considerably less disgruntled Rose, the bearer of good news.

“They are surrendering”, she said, beaming with excitement. “The plan worked! The Resistance is boarding their ships right now.”

“The tractor beam trick worked?” Poe asked.

“It did! And we trapped the ones who had already gotten in within the facility. They tried sending more people, but we heard on their commlinks that the troopers aboard their ships turned on their commanders. I think that other Stormtrooper may have contacted them.”

“She’s saving our hinds twice now”, he chuckled.

“We better hurry up and help them before she does that a third time”, Rey said. “Who knows what kind of offer you will be making her by then.”

“Hey, that’s not fair!” Poe whined.

Finn laughed. He, Poe, and Rey followed Rose and Chewie out to meet the others. For the first time in a while, he had a good feeling about this.

* * * * *

The Siege at Centerpoint Station was the last great battle fought against the First Order. Most of its generals and lieutenants were caught by the tractor beam; those who survived – and there were many who didn’t survive the reckoning of the Stormtrooper rebellion – were taken into custody, awaiting trial for their many war crimes.

It would take time before they faced justice, but justice would come.

First, however, there had to be a body to enact such judgement. Senator Ava Sloane and a few of the surviving members of the New Republic had been quietly working to prepare for that very moment, counting on General Organa and her team’s effort to succeed. Their plans were to form a new Democratic Alliance of Planets – hopefully this time one that would exist for more than a quarter of a century.

It was Senator Sloane herself who handed the medals to the brave heroes who faced and defeated Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, and those who had aided them. There were many tears and hugs and people asking if the medals could be melted and converted into credits.

Well, okay, only Jacen asked that, but that’s still one person too many.

But before they could properly celebrate, there was still something they had to take care of first.

“Are you sure they are gonna come?” Rey asked. She, Luke and Finn were aboard the _Falcon_ , currently stationed at the edge of a pocket nova; she and Finn were once again staring at a crack in the fabric of the universe.

She could hear the voices in the back of her head, louder and closer, and part of her thought that at any moment all those souls who had perished in the Hosnian system would come out and pull her in.

But she was not afraid.

“I sent out the message, to all those I knew, and to spread the news”, Luke said. “All we can do now is wait.”

That was what she hated doing the most. Waiting and waiting and waiting a little more. The minutes ticked away, each feeling like an eternity – each filled with dread. She knew there were others like them, but many were like Jacen; they had given up that part of themselves completely. Others were still in hiding. Many were too sick, Luke himself could barely keep himself standing. Her mother…

A nod grew in her throat just thinking about her mother in that bed, fighting for her life. She couldn’t – she _wouldn’t_ – let that continue, even if she had to do it alone.

Lucky for her, she wouldn’t have to.

They came – one by one. The _Ghost_. The _Mantis_. The _Razor Crest_. Others; dozens of others, some that they knew, some they didn’t. Not many, but more than they had expected. Finn searched with bathed breathe for one of Wraith’s ships among them: his uncle had not found any traces of Dhara after the battle at Centerpoint Station, but all her paraphernalia was gone by the time he returned to Pasaana, and he couldn’t tell if she had been through it or the jawa had gotten to it first.

“You think it will work?” Rey asked Luke.

“We’ll only know if we try”, he said.

They joined hands, with each other and across the ships, and focused, letting the Force flown through them and into healing the wound. A choir of silent voices singing in unison, hoping that the universe would hear them; that it would respond.

Soon, amidst the ocean of darkness that surrounded them, they could see it did. The flux of light flowing into the wound dwindled, little by little, and its color changed from dark purple to a ghastly white. The tear itself began to crumble, returning to its original state.

There wasn’t a lot of time for the next part of their plan. “Now, Poe”, Rey said, through the comms.

The one-person shuttle attached to the Falcon took off, speeding towards the otherworldly gateway. Poe had to manoeuver it carefully: BB-8 was inside the shuttle, and inside of BB-8 was a small, round container storing the anti-matter bomb. He had no idea where Luke had found the kind of durasteel that could contain it, but then again Dhara had apparently carried it around her neck for years without blowing anyone up, so maybe it wasn’t that hard.

His job was to get into the orbit of the crack and let its magnetic field do the job. Nobody had mentioned the part about the terrifying feeling at the pit of his stomach when he had to stare at the emptiness on the other side of the hole.

He still couldn’t believe they had crossed through it before. He’d rather have to face another star destroyer.

When the cue came, BB-8 ejected the shuttle. Poe had made sure to attach a cord around the astromech, in case it got pulled inside. The wound had begun to close just as BB reached its target, and had it taken more than a couple of seconds to release the container, it would have been too late.

From the _Falcon_ , they watched as it passed through, the torn pieces of sky melding together immediately afterwards. There was a moment where they held their breaths in, expecting the worse – an explosion, perhaps, or something else. Rey was almost expecting the cracks in the universe to reappear.

But it didn’t. The wound vanished, like it had never been there before, taking with it the last great threat they would have to face.

Now…now they could celebrate.

* * * * *

**SOMEWHERE NEAR JAKKU**

“This is stupid. _And_ pointless. This is stupid and pointless”, Jannah said, and if she had gritted her teeth any tighter, they would’ve shattered.

“You need to have a little more faith”, Rose said, cozying up at her side. “Faith in –”

“If you say ‘the Force’, I swear I will drop you off on the first asteroid I find”, Jannah side-eyed her.

“I was gonna say ‘Rey’. She seems to know what she’s doing…most of the time.”

“Not this time”, she groaned, sinking deeper on her chair. “It’s just false hope at this point.”

Jannah had managed to access the First Order files while the Specters set up the tractor beam – including the logs about her father. There were details reports on his ship blowing up in the vicinities of Jakku, before he could jump into lightspeed, his remains probably scattered across the galaxy. While the rest of them enjoyed the victory over the First Order, she resigned herself to the fact that her search had led her exactly where she always suspected it would, but had always struggled to admit to herself that that was the case.

Part of her had hoped she would find him in some prison deep in the Outer Rims, but she had always known that if he had been caught, her father would not have lasted long in the hands of Kylo and his goons. Perhaps this way she could live with the knowledge that he hadn’t suffered in his final moments.

_Could_ , but wasn’t going to. As soon as Rey had returned, she had jumped on to tell her the news. Something about travelling through time, but also… not? And alternative universes that didn’t exist. And rescuing Lando, but not really, technically. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but Rey was confident it was real and true, and they had to be reunited as soon as possible.

So Jannah had set herself out to find him, going on a blind porg chase. A mission she was meant to go on alone… but once again, plans had changed.

“Why did she ask you to come with me, anyway?” she asked Rose, who had spent the last few minutes trying to find a more comfortable position in her seat.

“I’m extremely efficient at reading starmaps”, Rose explained.

“And so is my ship”, Jannah clicked on the dashboard, lighting up her holomap. “I don’t think I’d need your help to see that there’s nothing here.”

“True…” Rose rotated the map around its axis. There were a handful of planets within the Western Reaches, but they were rather spread out; the maps showed a lot of empty space between each planet. Even then, the ones within reach from the point Rey had said he disappeared were not habitable locations. Things weren’t exactly looking up. “Maybe he fell back on Jakku?”

“And he just stayed there and never contacted anyone? Unlikely.”

“He could’ve lost his memory.”

“They would’ve still found him. _Someone_ would.”

It wasn’t like the First Order would have just _let_ him stay there, memory loss or not.

There had to be another explanation. Rose knew that – she could feel it. And she would revisit every known official map until she found it.

“Wait. That’s it!” she said, practically jumping out of her seat.

“That’s what?”

“That’s why we can’t find your father – we are only looking at the _known_ maps! We need to look at the unknown ones!”

“Right…I have no idea what that means.”

Rose sighed. “Not every planet is registered on official databases. The ones we have are either worlds with advanced societies, colonized worlds or deserted ones – but there are primitive planets, where technology hasn’t progressed fast enough to get them in contact with _other_ planets, and small enough to be registered on scanners as moons or even asteroids. Either that or they are far away from the usual routes, in the fringes of their systems, sometimes surrounded by dust clouds and that kind of thing.”

“Is that possible?” Jannah perked up on her chair. It wasn’t hope that was fueling her, she told herself; it was curiosity. That was all there was. “And you think… do you think my father may be on one of them?”

“Well, Rey said the destruction of his ship happened somewhere around here”, she said, circling an area within the map. “Depending on how much fuel his scape pod had, and assuming he went on a straight line, without the gravitational pull of any other planet interfering…” she drew a line further up, past the nearby planets, into a blank area.

The nearest star was the one near Jakku. If there was a planet there, how would it have been habitable?

_Maybe_ , Jannah thought, pushing on her thrusters. _With a little faith…_

The ship jumped in and out of lightspeed in a sprint, from Jakku to Rose’s coordinates. There was an asteroid belt nearby, shielding any ships passing by from the view of a small, blueish rogue planet in its neighborhood.

It was smaller than an average moon, and almost completely covered in water. Sensors indicated it had breathable air, and just enough light to allow fauna and flora to bloom. Jannah’s heart skipped a beat as she landed on the first settlement she picked on.

Most of the huts were rudimentary, fashioned out of sticks and mud, but one of them stood out – a monstrosity of metal and other spare parts. A crowd of dark-skinned humanoid figures hurried out of their homes once the ship landed, some filled with wonder, some armed with spears; they spoke in a language the universal translator could not understand.

“We…come…in…peace?” Rose stuttered, raising her hands to the sky. In due time, the crowd parted, allowing another figure to pass through, his cane leading the way.

Jannah could feel the air leaving her lungs. “Dad?” she called out, running to him.

Lando held his arms opened for her, holding his daughter as close and tight as he could. “Took you long enough, huh?”

* * * * *

**YAVIN 4**

“Are you ready for this?” Poe asked, extending his hand forward.

“I’m always ready”, Finn assured him. The couple – he wearing white, Poe dressed in black – joined hands together, hearts were swelling in anticipation. All the eyes were on them, but in that moment they could only see each other, as it had always been. Throughout all they had gone through, that was all that matters. That was how it would always be.

The garden beneath the shade of the Force tree in the Dameron homestead had been decorated for the ceremony – a small altar and about three dozen chairs for loved ones to celebrate the occasion. The sky over Yavin 4 was clear, a sign of good luck ahead.

Rey had suggested inviting the whole Resistance for the event, but the couple wanted something more intimate. There were friends, old – the specters were in the first rows, with Jacen perhaps a little too cozy next to Zare – and new – Bea had been more than eager to come, and Jannah and her father were sitting next to Chewie, the droids and the Organa-Skywalker family.

Lea had given them both her blessings the moment she recovered from her Force-illness. She was the one to suggest the tree for the ceremony – the same one Luke had gifted Shara once upon a time. In a way, it felt like his mom was there with them.

She was, sadly, not the only mother missing.

Finn had left a spot open next to his uncle, just in case... just in case.

The rest of the first rows were made up of the girl squad – Rey and Jess, Kaydel and Rose – who had spent most of the day crying, from the moment they had helped the couple get dressed up, to when they walked down the aisle, where Kes Dameron was waiting to officiate the ceremony (a task he had insisted on the honor of doing). The girls had not stopped crying during the vows, clinging to each other. Rey was already picturing how hers would be, and holding her hand, Pava was discreetly trying to get the right measurements for a ring.

BB-8 was the last to arrive. It rolled up to them, presenting the couple with a pair of shiny gold rings to finalize the union.

Well, actually – not finalize it. That only happened after the big kiss.

Finn and Poe had finally found a word that could define what they were to each other: _husband_.

* * * * *

**NIRAUAN**

The little wooden plaque hanging from the fence around the property read “ANTILLES” in scrapped letters. There was a familiar X-Wing parked in the back, still dirty and battered up, the owner having probably just returned.

Luke knew he was in the right place.

Still, he hesitated.

Funny how that worked. Luke could face off against some of the worst of the galaxy, and yet simply knocking on a door made his knees turn all funny.

It was a good thing Leia wasn’t around, or he would never hear the end of it.

It took a good number of breathing exercises before he worked up the courage to actually go ahead and knock. He was almost happy for a moment, when he didn't hear any sound from the other side, but then the door swung open and he found himself staring at the bright-eyed face of a young boy, who was looking back at him with curiosity.

“Can I help you?” the boy asked, with a lisp. One of his front teeth was missing.

“Yeah, I’m, uh, looking for...” he looked at the boy up and down. He was what? Seven? Nine? “...your father.”

The boy raised an eyebrow. He had also taken the time to inspect the figure in front of him, and he was clearly not impressed. “Uncle Wedge!”

“What is it, Jagged?” came a voice from inside the house. Luke recognized that voice.

“There’s a weird guy out here looking for you”, he said.

“Weird how?” Wedge asked, coming out of the other room. He had an apron around his waist and was currently busy drying his hands on a table cloth.

He caught Luke’s eyes and his expression changed. Luke could feel the smugness in the twist of that lip all the way from the other side of the room. “Oh, _this_ weird.”

Wedge finished drying his hands on the boy's hair, before sending him off to play with his siblings.

“So... nephew, huh?” Luke asked, scratching the back of his neck. Suddenly he was nineteen again, and Wedge looked just as cool.

“Yeah. I’m taking care of the little Fel monsters while their parents return”, he leaned back against the door frame. “They were pilots for the Resistance, but now that the war is over, they decided to go on a second honeymoon."

“Right. I didn’t know your sister had kids.”

“A lot of them, yeah. To be fair, it’s been a while.”

“Too long”, Luke agreed, with a sorrowful sigh.

“I heard rumors you were dead.”

“Those were...greatly exaggerated”, he chuckled. “I... I should’ve come sooner, but I – with the war and all –”

“I know. I get it. I wish I had been there to help out.”

“You weren’t?” he glimpsed out of the window, to the X-Wing outside.

“Syal and Soontir went in my place. My reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and I can’t rely on any Jedi stuff for help.” He gave Luke a playful bump in the shoulder with his fist. “A lot of things changed in the last decade.”

“So I’ve heard. But...I wouldn’t mind hearing it again, if you wanted to tell me more.”

Wedge rolled eyes, barely containing a smile. He shook his head and motioned for Luke to come inside.

Luke did so, closing the door behind him – and as one door closed, another one opened, into a brighter future that was just getting started.

* * * * *

**AJAN KLOSS**

Rey took a deep breathe, letting the fresh air from Ajan Kloss fill her lungs. The wind blew by, dragging with it the canopies of the nearby trees, and suddenly the whole forest was alive. Now that there weren’t any ships coming or going, and no personnel to make noise, the birds had returned to sing, and every once a furry friend would pop their heads out from a hole, look at her with big and wide eyes, and then dig their way back underground.

There was no threat, or anything to worry about. For now, she could just be.

But ‘for now’ tends to last short periods of time, as always.

“Is everything ready over here?” Luke asked, coming up from behind her. He and Leia, at his side, had been giving out the final touches on the inside.

Now that there was no more Resistance to be had, the Ajan Kloss base of operations had been kindly given to Luke so he could restart his Jedi Order. It was a big place, and it had managed to house their forces for well over a year, so it seemed like the perfect place.

Luke was also not really interested in searching for any other places, so there was also that.

Rey’s job was to hang out the final piece of decoration. In the archway at the entrance of the base, she had hung out the sign that said ‘JEDI PRAXEUM’. Luke had shot down calling it ‘Skywalker ranch’ for some reason.

“All done. Finn is gonna bring in the first padawans by the end of the afternoon”, Rey said. She wrapped her arm around her mother’s waist, as she had done practically every time they had been together since Leia had left intensive care. General Organa insisted she was fine, but Rey was having none of it.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Leia asked, patting Rey in the head. “Reopening the school?”

“I don’t know, are you planning on having any more kids? Hey!” He flinched when she smacked him in the arm. “But… yeah, I am sure. And if it doesn’t work, we try again, and again, for as many times as the galaxy needs us. Like they say, there must always be a Jedi.”

“And Finn and I will help you with that, while mom does her Senate stuff. They’ll need all the help they can get over there.”

“You tell me. I’ve asked Rose and Keydel for help while I recover, and they are already drowning on paperwork”, Leia sighed, shaking her head. “That reminds me, I haven’t answer Keydel’s last crying holocall…should we head back inside?”

“Just a moment,” Rey said, tapping over her pocket. “I still have something I need to do.”

Luke and Leia shared a look, but they didn’t question it.

Rey headed out into the forest, as deep and far from the academy as she could. She wanted his resting place to be closer to the family legacy, but not close enough that any wandering padawan could find their way there and accidentally come in contact with it. The last thing she wanted was one of the students accidentally losing a hand trying to swing that death trap around.

She never understood why he never tried fixing that health hazard, or how he never lost any fingers waving it around.

And those were questions he would never get to answer her.

It didn’t take long until she found a secluded enough spot. She lifted and moved the biggest rocks around into an assortment, something that vaguely resembled a burial ground; it was in there she buried Kylo – no – _Ben’s_ lightsaber, the only thing that remained of him after everything had been said and done.

All she had now were memories, but these weren’t even real; they were memories of a different world, a different life that she never got to live. The life that they both had deserved. She didn’t know why she had these memories, but she was glad she did. They were painful at times – Finn’s were, too, probably even more so than hers – but she wouldn’t trade them for anything.

As she stood up, Rey looked up at the sky, where the Falcon had just crossed by. Finn and Poe were coming with the new trainees; Poe had offered to scout for them before he took his new role as the head of the Democratic Alliance fleet. Pava was excited to be his second-hand woman. Rey couldn’t wait to see her again.

She couldn’t wait to make some _real_ happy memories this time.


	4. Epilogue.

* * * * *

**EXEGOL**

The ship landed hard on the callous surface of the planet. Mangled and burning, it had barely survived the trip through lightspeed – but escaping destruction wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling to its pilot.

She untangled herself from her seat, dragging her body away from the ship before it blew up. The fire was the only light for miles in all directions, but she didn’t need it for guidance.

Dhara knew exactly where she was going.

In one hand, she was clutching the magenta lightsaber she had used to slash her way through the band of mercenaries trying to ransack her base; in the other, the Sith holocron that had called to her when she slithered her way out of the Siege.

She had asked herself, again and again, why the Force had kept her alive. Why her of all people? She had thought the goal was to destroy the First Order, to bring an end to the war – even if it meant destroying the galaxy itself.

She knew different now.

She knew better.

“The Jedi are back”, she said, limping towards a gigantic monolith that stood at the center of the island. “But as long as there are Jedi…”

Dhara raised the holocron. A red light shone out of it and into the stone surface. Something inside clicked loudly, like the gears grinding against each other. The monolith cracked open, opening a passageway for her. “There must always be a Sith.”


End file.
